f78 LILY NEILL
The Habit Of A Foreign Sky Own Label FILN611
This is the second album from a much trav- elled American harp player, and was recorded in Finland’s Sibelius Academy. Neill’s playing has firm roots in traditional Irish music (she has recorded with The Chieftains), but she is unafraid of adopting other influences. With nods to South America, Scandinavia, Hot Club de Paris and elsewhere, her syncopated and percussive technique reminds this non-harper of Savourna Stevenson, which is no bad thing.
Lily Neill
of Dave sharing his thoughts as he works with stone chipping and bird song in the back- ground and even the scene of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Among the ‘friends’ who contribute songs are Pete Coe with his No So Steady, Gordon Bok singing Dave’s famed These Dry Stone Walls whilst Dave himself sings his other well-known song on the subject, Stone On Stone.
Listening to this excellent album, one thinks what an excellent radio programme it would make just as it stands. One is also reminded of the stage shows on railway sub- jects that Dave devised with The Salami Brothers. The work that has gone into this album would also be a good basis for such a show. Any chance of this?
www.davegouder.co.uk Vic Smith
JACK BLACKMAN River Town No catalogue number
Jack Blackman is a 17-year-old guitarist and singer from Warwickshire, whose heroes are the old country blues masters like Blind Blake and Rev Gary Davis. That’s the style Blackman emulates here, on his first full-length album, and it’s a remarkably accomplished perfor- mance for one so young.
The album is entirely a solo effort, with Blackman sticking to acoustic guitar through- out, and writing all but two tracks himself. The two covers are Muddy Waters’ Can’t Be Satisfied and a live version of Blind Blake’s Police Dog Blues from the Radio 2 Young Folk Awards. Blackman’s playing is lively and fluid right through the album, combining some very agile finger-picking with a percussive slap on the strings after every phrase. The two slide numbers – Whisky Grave and Can’t Be Satisfied – are particularly enjoyable.
The problem comes with his voice, which often pipes when it should roar or growl. A teenager’s voice simply lacks the authority to pull off lines like: “They’ll never see what we’ve seen” or: “Pour whisky on my grave”. Instead of feeling a shiver of fear when he threatens to pistol-whip us to death in Can’t Be Satisfied, you want to tousle his hair.
Blackman’s own lyrics draw largely from his recent trip to the American South, and are full of the observations you’d expect a young Englishman to make there. Stranger alone squeezes in Spanish moss, live oaks, a chain gang, cotton blossom, heat mirages, roadkill, neon signs, the levee and noisy bullfrogs.
Thankfully, not every song’s like this.
Trouble details some of his mates’ cider-fuelled adventures, and here the sound of a modern British teenager using the blues idiom to talk about his own life brings something more dis- tinctive to the table. The folksy Stick Stock Stone hits closer to home too, telling the leg- end of Warwickshire’s Rollright Stones.
Set Blackman’s age aside for a moment, and this emerges as a respectable debut rather than an astonishing one. He’ll make far better albums than this in the future, but the foundations he’s laid here are solid enough. His love of the blues is clearly gen- uine and, with more than 100 gigs already under his belt, he’s doing everything right to ensure he grows into a major talent. What he needs right now is a few years of hard living to roughen up that voice a bit.
www.jackblackman.com Paul Slade VARIOUS ARTISTS
Beginner’s Guide To Scandinavia Nascente NSBOX079
A tough job, squeezing a representative, inviting sampling of the music of all the Nordic countries – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Denmark and the Faroes – into just three CDs, but what compiler Tatiana Rucins- ka has come up with is indeed a good and unusual introduction to today’s music.
In three loose categories, ‘Pop and Con- temporary’, ‘Folk and Roots’ and ‘Jazz, Exper- imental & Atmospheres’, there are many familiar names for the Nordic-initiated, but I won’t mention them because that would be to sideline the rest, and the value of this com- pilation is that it has a different viewpoint that one hopes will inspire exploration. Leav- ing out Norden’s classical music and most of its mainstream chart-pop, and largely playing down the fiddling that, while an essential and strong feature of the folk musics of Nor- way and Sweden in particular, can obscure some of their other delights, there’s an emphasis on vocals, often female, and the richly varied textures of the other instru- ments and musical approaches that make today’s Nordic musics distinctive.
The label’s website currently buries it in the back-catalogue, not in new or recent releases, but a glance at the track listing at online sellers’ sites, and its remarkably bar- gain price – under £7 or even under £6 – should spur click-buy action. (Did I really just write that?)
Andrew Cronshaw
There’s a lovely mix of material – tradi- tional Irish and Finnish dance music, a sensual Finnish tango, one of Phil Cunningham’s love- ly slow airs as well as her own compositions – and all are tackled with great aplomb. With sporadic help from a few guests (including the blessed Timo Alakotila on keyboards and some superb Grapelli-esque fiddling from Kukka Lehto on Life On Wheels), this is a sparkling and delightful album of superb music from start to finish and well worth seeking out.
www.lilyneill.com Bob Walton RENATO BORGHETTI
Andanças – Live in Brussels Saphrane S62609
Wow, this is good! Renato Borghetti is Brazil- ian diatonic accordeon player of European extraction who leads a four-piece group that fully matches his own prodigious talents. The music, embracing elements of tango and other Latin American styles, with a hint of tarantella and a big dollop of jazz, is full of invention and virtuosity: think Riccardo Tesi and Banditaliana and you’ll get the idea. Borghetti is himself a player of great dex - terity, capable of pyrotechnics and lyricism, but he doesn’t feel the need to push himself forward relentlessly as the front man in what is a true ensemble. Pedro Figuerdo’s soprano sax and flute are swooping swifts of melody, Danile Sá’s acoustic guitar is full of spiky ener- gy, while Vitor Peixto’s piano underpins everything while pulling off some classy solos. From the opening Milonga Para Samões Lopes Neto, an exquisite slow piece led by the soprano, to the jaw-dropping gui- tar/accordeon duels of O Sem Vergonha, every minute of Andanças is music of the highest class. And they’re playing it all live! There’s a stage show video as a bonus.
The label is an offshoot of the Nether- lands’ Music & Words, to be found at
www.saphrane.com.
Brian Peters
TARAN Hotel Rex Ynys Records YNYS 005
Somebody shake me please! Tell me plainly and clearly I’m not dreaming. This is Taran isn’t it? Taran who boldly produced Catraeth, the kind of release which propelled Welsh sources forward a zillion light years and took the festivals of Brittany by the hand, leading them to mega reactions as a heaving, jigging mass. Taran, in whom I placed so much faith… This is Taran… yes dear reader and do they deliver with Hotel Rex? For a second album this is not only a bold departure but a leap of faith into the unknown. I must con- fess here that Gerard Kilbride, excellent chap that he is, sent me over the net some rough mixes of tracks from Hotel Rex but my PC crashed and took with it the precious files before I’d really got my brain round the music. So sorry Gerard, but read this plainly and shout it loud, Hotel Rex is nothing short
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