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John Spiers & Jon Boden
SPIERS & BODEN The Works Navigator 046
Tempus is bloody well fugitting, if you ask me. Supposedly, this terrific CD marks ten years since the Peter
Cook & Dudley Moore of English folk hit the boards with motor revving, but that’s clearly nonsense as it surely can’t be more than half that time. Checks release date of Through And Through… Oh.
The Works finds them revisiting some of the greatest hits from their five albums to date, in stellar folk company that they can hardly have imagined the honour of even sharing bills with when they started out in Oxford pub sessions – the likes of Carthy Snr & daughter, Martin Simpson, Pete Coe, Andy Cutting, Maddy Prior and more. And the fact is, they not only hold their own but centre and drive the proceedings in such company.
There’s always a suspicion that artists only revisit their back catalogue when they’ve got the creative block, but anybody who has witnessed this duo’s development over that speed-decade will be aware how their reper- toire favourites have evolved. Boden’s singing has become ever more expressive and distinc- tive with each passing year, and their instru- mental skills have not simply grown but become increasingly telepathic.
Everything here comes up fresh, lively, natural and full-bodied. Just to single out a couple of adjacent tracks, there’s the superb set of morris tunes Gooseberry Bush/ Lau- danum Bunches from their debut, now with Bampton’s official guitarist Martin Carthy adding extra pulse, followed by The Birth Of Robin Hood from their most recent out- ing, now with Eliza Carthy, Sam Sweeney and Hannah James fleshing out what – along with many of the line-ups here – sounds like a mature and well-played-in band. Tellingly, you know that on the tunes they can see the dancers and on the song,
Some of R.U.T.A.
Boden is watching the movie as he sings. It’s one of those albums from which a fresh favourite emerges on each playing: right now it’s the fluid Brown Adam with Martin Simpson’s understated guitar and a particu- larly tender Boden vocal.
Lazy artists and opportunist labels would have settled for slinging together a Greatest Hits to milk existing recordings, but The Works triumphantly proves there’s a better way of doing it. If they set a trend for others to do the same, I’ll not be complaining if they’re even half as good as this.
Beautifully recorded and produced in
Sheffield by Andy Bell, my single only com- plaint is that the un-named designer deserves stringing up for crimes against typography. Sleeve notes in a light serif face at 5.5 point, reversed out of black! I’d actually asked Colin Irwin to review it before he declared an inter- est as having written the notes, which are so illegible I hadn’t noticed. I still haven’t had the patience to try to read them. Grrr!
www.navigatorrecords.co.uk Ian Anderson
R.U.T.A. Gore Karrot Kommando KK39
A collaboration between Polish root- sters and four of Poland’s leading punk vocalists, spit-
ting angry lyrics from the folk tradition drawn from archive collections and record- ings; rages by the poor peasants against their feudal oppressors – “songs of rebellion and misery, 16th-20th century”, as the album’s subtitle translates. Punk’s ordinary old gui- tars, bass and drumkit are substituted by wild abrasive sounds from entirely acoustic folk and medieval instruments played, under assumed names, by members of various folk- revival bands including Warsaw Village Band, Mosaic and Rivendell.
R.U.T.A., the latest project initiated by
Warsaw Village Band prime mover, percus- sionist and radio producer Maciej Szajkowski, stands for Ruch Utopii, Transcendencji, Anar- chii – ‘the movement of utopia, transcen- dence, anarchy’, or alternatively Reakcyjna Unia Terrorystyczno Artystowska – ‘the reac- tionary terrorist-artistic union’. The album (whose title comes from the line ‘Co gore?’ – ‘what’s burning?’) and live band’s energy show signs of creating a folk-crossover stir in Poland; whether being shouted at in Polish will appeal abroad remains to be seen.
In true punk fashion the tracks are brief – averaging well under two minutes, the whole album only half an hour long – and fiercely unrelenting, a matter of short riffs of churning bowed and strummed strings, bang- ing baraban (bass drum) and tishing cymbal rather than melody. The closing tracks – a paean to Jakub Szela, leader of the 1846 peasant uprising known as the Galician Slaughter in which a thousand nobles were killed, and a Warmian forest workers’ song fantasising about getting their own back on the lords and stewards – are followed after a pause by two unlisted 1950s field recordings of women singing, robustly but much more sweetly than the rest of the album.
www.karrot.pl Andrew Cronshaw
SORRY BAMBA Volume 1 1970-1979 Thrill Jockey Thrill 272
As signposted on the subtitle to this won- derfully nostalgia- inducing album, this is the first of hopeful-
ly many volumes of albums showcasing band leader Sorry Bamba’s extensive career and covers his time as leader of the popular Kana- ga Orchestra and Regional Orchestra of Mopti. These bands formed a crucial part of the movement to imbue modern post-inde-
Photo: Bartek Muracki
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