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of someone raised on traditional tunes, while few modern uilleann pipers have the status and prestige of Ronan Browne, one of the stars of The Transatlantic Sessions. When they stir up the gas on a set of reels like The Glen Road To Carrick, they effortlessly cruise into thrill mode, matching brilliant instrumental interplay with taste and measure control… and are never obvious about it. The barrage of Micho Russell’s Jigs, the oddly leftfield and discordant mesh of chanter and fiddle on the air Paddy’s Rambles Through The Park and the unusual combination of banjo and flute on Cronin’s Jigs demonstrate a slightly alter- native route into these tunes.
Meanwhile Tyrrell’s rootsy, rural voice underlines the rare credentials of an album of solid virtuoso playing (aided and abetted by Fergus Feely (mandola), Jimmy Fitzgerald (guitar) and Paul O’Driscoll (double bass) yet one whose direction is impossible to second guess. A Yeats poem is set to music on The Cap And Bells, Delia Murphy is celebrated in the heartfelt saga of Dan O’Hara, while there’s fun and games on an adaptation of Samuel Lover’s The Quaker’s Meeting and spoonfuls of acceptable sentiment on The Skies O’er Ballyroan. The rest is party time and these boys sure know how to party. It’ll be a good year for Ireland if anyone manages to match the quality of this one.
www.tyrrellglackinbrowne.com Colin Irwin
VARIOUS ARTISTS Afrolatin Via Dakar Discograph 3237562
Afrolatin Via Kinshasa Discograph 3237582
Producer Ibrahima Sylla has released several fat anthologies of his vast and ground-break- ing works via Discograph. Here are two more mighty stonkers illustrating the response of musicians in Senegal and the Congo to the all-conquering records brought over the Atlantic by Cuban sailors in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
I’ll admit now that it was a big surprise to me when I discovered that this amazing music I first heard in the ‘80s from Franco and others was called ‘rumba’; I associated the term with Edmundo Ros and Desi Arnaz, but this African stuff was something else entire- ly – bigger, richer, straight from the heart. And the same was going on in Senegal. Here again there was gusto, a tireless ability to hold on to a riff and turn it into something glorious, and a less than sketchy grasp of the Spanish language. Something new was being fashioned, unawares.
The first track on the Dakar volume sets the mood, much repeated in the songs that follow: the beloved three-chord La Bamba phrase, improvised Spanish, a mangled steal from Guantanamera, all recorded in what sounds like a tin hangar with extra reverb. And we’re in. Some points soon become clear: African vocals seem somehow more direct than their Cuban models, less stylised, less distance between artist and listener. Same with the rhythms: even when the per- cussion is light, it goes more instinctively for the main nerve, the beat that penetrates. Africa traditions are coming through.
Cuban son drew heavily on Congolese models in the first place. But Latin traces are generally less pronounced on the Kinshasa CDs. The opening tracks – by Tabu Ley, Grand Kalle and Franco – are prototypical rumba Lingala, bass-led, light on percussion, with sweet harmony, stellar guitar and soulful horns. Even when Franco advises us to ‘baile cubano’, it sounds already subverted. What he’s really telling you is something deeper and warmer and more powerful. And wait till you get to Dr Nico doing Sukisa Liwa Na Ngai: this is music almost beyond category. Such
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
poise, such restraint. Only a musicologist would be left asking questions.
Which is quite lucky, because the notes on both sets are confused and badly trans- lated. Answers are not readily forthcoming. The tracks are undated and not sequenced in any discernible order. Luckily there’s enough in them – few seem to have appeared on other anthologies – to satisfy anyway. This is fine listening.
Distributed in the UK by Discovery.
www.discovery-records.com Rick Sanders
GILLIAN WELCH
The Harrow & The Harvest Acony/Warners 5052498671724)
Back after a fallow eight years, The Harrow & The Harvest sees the symbiotic Welch-Rawlings partnership slowly but persistently working its magic with a low-key gem.
If it’s possible, here is a record which is even further stripped bare – crystal-eloquent guitar and banjo picking, languid vocal lines and melancholic harmonies. It is the essence of all that makes Welch shine: dark, aloof and lonesome. She has an uncanny knack of creat- ing songs with Rawlings which already sound like timeless standards – concentrated as they are in their Tennessee landscape, the elements and human experience.
Despite their stark, sad elegance, there is an earthy warmth to these songs. In part that may be down to the comfort that comes from creating music with a soulmate; in part it may be the rootsiness of the sound. The album is heralded as creating “a new southern sound” with its dark, murderous and broken contem- porary Appalachian story songs (The Way It Goes or Scarlet Town) and its ‘wind through the pines’ imagery of songs like the bluesy Dark Turn Of Mind.
The songs that are particularly sticking with me on early listens are holler Six White Horses with its banjo/body percussion accom- paniment and the exquisite ballad writing of Hard Times.
Perhaps the only disappointment on the stripped-bare front is the packaging – a basic thick card insert in a cheap black plas- tic tray jewel-box (am I imagining it smells of lavender?). It certainly belies the quality of its contents!
www.gillianwelch.com Sarah Coxson
ADRAN D The Ascent Alto ALT004CD.
Now then, it must be something they’re putting in the water! Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more talented Welsh acts left to discover, along come Adran D with a unique take, immediately making you buck up and listen. This music takes prisoners and keeps the repeat button on permanent- ly. I mean, how could you not love the con- cept? Six diverse musicians, some as trad as Sunday roast beef, others used to murkier waters with Taran, rockers too, even (whis- per it who dares) classical music! Theirs is a true mix and fusion which, once they get in groove, scorches rather than merely singes your critical facilities. Fusion is actually about as close as you could come to describing the talented tumble and roustabout which issues from the speakers.
The six-piece casts a dizzying spell from
the off, dragging old Welsh airs, including the hymn tune All Through The Night, into the backbeat, sometimes quietly, other times kicking and screaming as on Cold Snap. A piece that comes dangerously near to pure folk funk, they just invented a new hybrid, did you notice? But it’s like that most of the way through, just when you think they’ve set- tled on something and are motoring, the sax- ophone or the fiddle – Calan’s Angharad Jenkins – leaps in and take things off in a totally unexpected direction, which I have to say may leave you woozy, especially if you’re like me and want to find all the subtleties and glue on the headphones.
I’ve listened now oodles of times and still finds twists and delights I’d not sussed out before. Erudite and obviously a bloke who likes to live dangerously, keyboardist Dave Danford has overseen a crafting of sounds which blend what’s contemporary with her- itage. The character shot through to the core is Welsh and where that strikes you more than anywhere is on Hen Ferchetan where ever-game Delyth Jenkins brings her harp to the remix party.
I’m tempted to say that Adran D could
be the Welsh Moving Hearts 30 years later, and if that sounds like too much, I defy you to jump in feet first and swim through the lushness.
No frills, this is great stuff and it’s their debut yet! Lord knows what they’ll do next but I’ll be with them every step of the way.
www.altopublications.com
Simon Jones
Photo: Mark Seliger
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