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Williams and others are moulded into an out- standing acoustic album fronted by Shee- han’s spot-on singing and playing. The arrangements are extremely well-thought- out, with the Stanleys’ The Memory Of Your Smile turned into a gentle blues and fusing perfectly with a version of Blind Willie McTell’s In The Wee Midnight Hours. Difficult- to-perform songs like Satisfied Mind come across particularly well. Overall, nothing startling, nothing that hasn’t been done before but plenty that has often been tried and treated cruelly. Refreshing to hear so many familiar songs in good hands.
www.LaurenSheehanMusic.com John Atkins MONSTER CEILIDH BAND
Mechanical Monster MCB Records. MCB002CD
Heralded as some kind of longed-for moment when the worlds of techno and trad would collide in a head-on giddying rush, the second album from MCB had to display authority, grit, daring and not a little cavalier intention. Whisper it if you dare… revolu- tion. And whilst Mechanical Monster may not be quite the overturning of the estab- lishment, it doesn’t half kick like a mule, growl and even howl its intentions over two CDs. If the Borg had a ceilidh band, then they’d sound pretty much like this.
Enough of the fripperies, let’s get to the core. The band have never made any secret of the fact that they want to transmogrify folk dance into a mutant, which would work equally for tweed skirts or clubbers. Live, they’ve built up a situation with drum’n’bass mixer The Touch, where atmosphere is key, maybe easier to achieve in the sweaty intima- cy of a gig. The studio, well, that’s a different matter. Having hoofed round the floor to an MCB groove, I’ve got to say they’re pretty funky without the electro bit. Bassist David De La Haye’s playing is dub- and beat-heavy, a factor the folkies play off against. The first disc demonstrates that amply with loads of big fat accordeon, fiddle melodies bouncing round failing mandocello and Haye’s dexter- ously pliable bass lines. It’s probably pretty much as you recall them from their debut.
They’re eager young things out to party
with all the speed and enthusiasm youth can muster and if that was where they’d left mat- ters, the album would be lively enough. How- ever, the second disc is the creation that they’ve kept in the dark of gig development until now and, whilst they may add to or refine it in future, this is some creature. Mon- sters Vs The Touch does take some listening. Despite the instant fix of beats and samples flying through the jigs and reels, you have to take a deep breath and press replay several times for the full impact to sink in. Without that tenacity you could say it sounds like they’d just grafted a dance DJ on to make appropriate rhythm tracks, and that’s where you’d be wrong. By writing their own materi- al, what they’ve done is use the addition of The Touch to amplify and reflect in just the right places so that he complements them and they him. It’s not so much a case of versus, as alongside. Mutants are rarely as upfront as this – watch the X Men and they spend most of their time in the shadows – which stomps all over your neighbourhood in a sonorous hootenanny. The names of the tracks tell much: Red Monster, Witches, Proggit, Stom- ach Steinway Woman, Dirty Bee – hardly the stuff of prim, proper country dances! Addic- tive, it’s a leap into the future. They can’t real- ly go anywhere near four square after this. Techno ain’t no limit, let’s hope.
www.monsterceilidhband.co.uk Simon Jones
VARIOUS ARTISTS Highlife Time 2 Vampisoul VAMPI CD 129
Spanish label Vampisoul declares itself “now established as one of the hippest and most respected reissue labels on the planet”. A look at their catalogue confirms the boast, especially if you like Peruvian funk, TV sound- tracks and deeply obscure R&B. In such com- pany, this their second compilation of Ghana- ian and Nigerian highlife and offshoots – this time chosen and annotated by Rita Ray and Max Reinhardt – is positively conservative.
The mix of tracks is sharp, inviting and
varied. You can trace a line from wheezy brass-led big-band swing to something small- er, guitar-led and whippier. You can sense, somewhere down the line, afrobeat. Among the artists are ET Mensah followed by a string of honourable bandleaders: Dr Victor Olaiyo, Prince Nico, Dr Sir Warrior, Chief Stephen Osadebe and Cardinal Rex Lawson. No arch- bishops, I see, no Duke of Earl, but there’s a band called the Philosophers National. Sky’s the limit – such personal ennoblement speaks of good times, stressing the confident, happy nature of the music. No post-beatnik sulks here, no exi black polo-necks. No Eminem, no Howling Wolf, no Fela. This, after all, is the soundtrack to West African independence.
www.vampisoul.com Rick Sanders
CALICANTO Mosaico Calicanto Italia CLC015
This is the 14th album from the Venice-based ensemble Calicanto and marks their 30th anniversary. Their energy and imagination are undimmed and they take their music into a different realm on Mosaico with around half of the album made up of their first col- laboration with an orchestra.
The orchestral tracks were recorded at a concert in January 2010 where Calicanto per- formed alongside the Orchestra Regionale Filarmonia Veneta. The orchestration is by classical composer Gianluca Baldi with the source material being a mixture of traditional pieces and original Baldi compositions (some co-composed with Calicanto members). Xe Destin is a slow orchestral piece, Buran is an accordeon-led Piazzolla-like tango, Vento Di Tramontana/Moresca Arcana slowly builds in complexity with inventive orchestration, Nina Nina is a a traditional song set to a hymn-like arrangement and Stanote M’Ho Insoogna has an atmospheric Celtic feel.
Monster Ceilidh Band
The remaining tracks are studio record- ings by the more conventional Calicanto line- up. The opening three tracks on the album are among the strongest and most varied of the studio recordings: Grechesa has an insis- tent Eastern European rhythm, Venexia Mia features Claudia Ferronate’s beautiful voice over slow, sparse, harp-dominated instru- mentation and Barene is a Celtic-flavoured dance tune.
The orchestral performances are inte- grated in the track sequencing between the studio recordings and give a pleasing contrast between small ensemble and orchestra arrangements. Having an audience reaction at the end of some tracks and not others is only mildly distracting.
Calicanto’s material and approach is already varied so including an orchestra gives an even richer tonal palette.
Distributed by Felmay
www.felmay.it Michael Hingston
SÖNDÖRGÖ
Tamburising – Lost Music Of The Balkans World Village 450017
The tambura is a fretted instrument found in the Balkans, where its progenitors arrived centuries ago from the direction of Iran and Turkey. In Bulgaria and Macedonia it’s largely a solo or song-accompanying instrument, but in former Yugoslavia in the mid-19th Century tambura bands arose, causing the develop- ment and evolution of a range of different sized instruments, all played with plectrums. The small lead tamburas usually have a teardrop-shaped soundbox while the larger, accompanying ones have become guitar- shaped, and the bass looks something like a double bass but with frets and a flat bridge.
Tambura bands multiplied, with some expanding to big arranged orchestras attached to cities or national radios, but over recent decades their number has been dimin- ishing, the gigging bands depressingly often replaced at festivities and on Adriatic holiday hotel terraces by duos dribbling pop-schlock on keyboards and sequencers.
Söndörgö, though, are bucking the trend. They’re a hot tambura quintet, with the ability to switch to equally smart kaval, accordeon, frula, clarinet, sax, trumpet, der- buka and tapan. Hungarian Serbs from the town of Szentendre north of Budapest, four of the band, the Eredics brothers, are the sons of Kálmán Eredics, bassist with well-known Hungarian Serbian tambura band Vujicsics.
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