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for one of the best live gigs I’ve been to in sev- eral years: the album doesn’t disappoint, and whether taking the title tune on a compre- hensive transatlantic tour, playing Scottish or Galician tunes or contemporary material, it’s an aural joy from start to finish.
www.culburnie.com
Anna-Wendy Stevenson (of Fine Friday, Anam and elsewhere) is not only a highly respected classical violinist and traditional fiddler but a composer of note. My Edin- burgh is a suite originally commissioned for Celtic Connections, and consists of a sequence of nine pieces inspired by the town, together with short spoken descriptive prose passages: musical postcards from the past as it were. The music is played by Anna-Wendy plus members of McFall’s Chamber, and the likes of Fraser Fifield, Fos Paterson and Donald Hay; there are traditional Scottish, contempo- rary and jazz influences (the opening Fred Thomson’s Reel could have come straight from Shooglenifty). Taken as a whole this represents an impressive and serious (but very enjoyable) work. The second half of the album repeats the music without the prose vocals, if that’s what takes your fancy.
www.anna-wendy.com Bob Walton TERAKAFT
Aratan N Azawad World Village WVF479052
GROUP DOUEH Zanya Jumma Sublime Frequencies SF066
JUJU In Trance Real World CDRW185
BOMBINO Agadez Cumbancha CMB-CD 20
More than 25 years after Ali Farka Toure emerged on the international scene and about a decade since Tinariwen hove into view, desert bluespeople are everywhere. Is it possible to have too much of a good (if rather limited) thing? Not if it’s as good as the new Terakaft album. Formed by former members of the original Tinariwen line-up, the Malian five-piece can play the shuffling and brood- ing desert blues with the best of them, but this, their third release, stands out because they try a lot more too. The semi-acoustic title track has some lovely folk-rock style guitar and there’s a Latin twist to Akoz Imgharen (a plea for Tuareg unity). Where so much in this style gets by on groove and attitude, Terakaft have variety, musicianship and well-crafted melodies on their side.
www.worldvillagemusic.com
Saharoui rockers Group Doueh are an altogether scuzzier proposition. Like much of the Sublime Frequencies stable, the seven- piece (including a chorus of three female back- ing singers), have a raw, lo-fi sound reminis- cent of a ‘60s garage band relocated to exotic climes: all thrashy guitar, cheapo organ and howling vocals. Not for the fainthearted then, or those seeking the easy-listening African blues experience, but on this fourth album, recorded on location in Western Sahara, they find that missing ‘true spirit of primal rock ‘n’ roll’ sound that so many hyped-up (but usually disappointing) neo-rockers strive for, while retaining a distinctive Saharoui feel (right down to the tea glasses as percussion).
www.sublimefrequencies.com
Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara have shortened their name, beefed up their sound and lengthened their tracks. Now known as JuJu, guitarist Adams and West African riti violin player Camara are joined by bassist Billy Fuller and drummers Dave Smith and Martyn
Barker on an album that takes two of the three tracks on last year’s Trance Sessions EP, plus five new pieces all in the Trance Sessions’ style of longer workouts designed to stretch both time and the skills of the musicians involved. The result is an album that lacks the short, sharp pop-hookery of tune such as Kele Kele (from 2009’s Tell No Lies) but pushes the JuJu sound to the edges of psychedelia and jazz improv, with lengthy instrumental pas- sages and a general air of wig-outedness. As much desert rock as desert blues then, but fortunately all concerned never stray into showoff virtuosity for its own sake, but rather lock into (as the title suggests) trance grooves. The moody Jambajo with its twangy guitar, intense riti and Camara’s echoey vocal works particularly well.
www.realworldrecords.com/juju
Omara Moctar aka Bombino is a Tuareg singer and guitarist from Niger who peddles a pared-down version of Tamashek desert blues, with just guitar and percussion in the mix. He’s got a good guitar sound, nothing that we haven’t heard before but very nicely executed. However, I find his vocals rather thin and nothing here really jumps out at me in the way that the best tracks from the other albums reviewed in this roundup do. Not bad, but not I think one of Cumbancha’s best.
www.bombinoafrica.com Jamie Renton
JOHN RENBOURN Palermo Snow Shanachie 78065
I’ve lost count of how many albums John Ren- bourn has released, either solo or in various combinations, but this one has to be up there among his very best – which tells you most of what you need to know. The tunes are split between Renbourn’s own compositions and his guitar arrangements of seemingly extremely diverse pieces: the switches from the classic Dixie jazz of Ugly James, taken from part of Jelly Roll Morton’s Frog-I-More Rag, through the sparse, chordal Sarabande by Erik Satie, and then to an echoing, rich ver- sion of JS Bach’s Cello Prelude In G (you know, that one) make perfect sense as a sequence here, as do the original pieces. In these, the flowing title track gives way to a more bro- ken, staccato delivery on Dery Miss Grsk, before the lush homecoming anthem Bella Terra and the pyrotechnics of Cirque D’Hiver.
Writing a humorous guitar tune has to be one of the most difficult things in the world if one wants to avoid parody, and Wee- bles Wobble (But They Won’t Fall Down) brings a smile and maybe a memory of the
Hazmat Modine
original TV adverts from the 1970s, while Randy Weston’s cool jazz Little Niles and a gentle, swinging Blueberry Hill bring everything home.
Throughout, the sound and tone of the guitars is nothing short of magnificent, and Renbourn, as always, makes full use of the dynamics of each one. After more than 40 years, he’s still putting out killer albums.
Ian Kearey
HAZMAT MODINE Cicada Jaro medien GmbH JARO 4292
New York’s global-Americana-ists Hazmat Modine sound bolder and brassier on this sec- ond album, with the basic eight-piece line-up (including two harmonicas, reason enough to love them in itself), bolstered by guest turns from Natalie Merchant, the Kronos Quartet and Benin’s Gangbe Brass Band. As on their debut from a few years back, their sound is a rootsy smorgasbord of blues, old-timeyness, funk and soul, blending in rhythms and instruments from a range of cultures and all topped off with bandleader Wade Schuman’s growling voice and strange lyrics, here often drawing on imagery from the natural world (he’s also an exhibiting painter and brings something of a visual art sensibility to his words). There are impressive covers of Irving Berlin’s Walking Stick and Fredrick Knight’s venerable soul gem I’ve Been Lonely For So Long, plus notable original material Child Of A Blind Man (which features both Merchant and the Gangbe Brass), the bizarre jazzy cut- up of the title track and best of the lot, So Glad, on which Schuman preaches gospel blues over a reggae shuffle (with some added Hungarian cimbalom stirred in for good mea- sure). Raw, impure and really rather groovy.
www.hazmatmodine.com/home.html Jamie Renton
FAIRPORT CONVENTION Festival Bell Matty Grooves MGCD050
A soft strum on the guitar, a bouncy bass line, drop beat percussion, gliding fiddle, the sound of summer is here. Fairport Convention are upon us once more, sporting a new studio album. Remarkably it’s four years since Sense Of Occasion, the between time covered by a series of limited issues, live and foreign rari- ties collections. The release of Festival Bell celebrates not only the relationship between the band and their adopted village of Cro- predy in a real sense, but also points up the fact that what was once rock’s most change-
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