65 f


the Latin fusions that had previously been so generic in this region, and putting down deeper roots in Senegambian traditions. An inspiration to the likes of Youssou N’Dour , the Gambian band’s earthy, expressive lead singer Moussa N’Gom is central to Guelewar’s sound. The singer later sang with Super Dia- mono before embarking a solo career.


The live spirit is effectively and evoca- tively conveyed: this is sweaty late-night Afro-Manding funk music, thick with the air of cigarette smoke. It is unrefined and rough around the edges and all the better for it.


www.terangabeat.com Sarah Coxson


STELIOS PETRAKIS, EFRÉN LÓPEZ, BIJAN CHEMIRANI


Mavra Froudia Musièpoca World MEPCD003


Spain meets Greece; specifically Valencia – via Afghanistan and Istanbul – meets Crete, as Efrén López (once main man of L’Ham du Foc) and Stelios Petrakis join Bijan Chemirani, creating a fresh generation of innovators and establishing a new benchmark for Mediterranean musical collaboration.


The intensity of López’s earlier back- ground in medieval-inspired music spiced with rock/heavy metal experience and aes- thetic, is transmuted into a precise, warm yet earthy dexterity, effected through the host of strings he now plays. These include hurdy gurdy, laúd, viola da roda, davul, santur, rabab, kopuz, and are balanced by Pterakis on inimitable Cretan lyre. His solo piece Pano Horos (up-dance) on various Cretan lyres, based on a version of this dance from the mountain village of Olympus by Mihalis Zografidis, is mesmerising.


This is far more than a mere exchange of tunes with one supporting the other: arrangements are intricate and there are some gorgeous new compositions written with each other in mind, notably the charged opener Mavra Froudia (Black Eyebrows) which López infused with ‘petrakice’ spirit by hanging Petrakis’ portrait around his house while he composed. Equally striking is Petrakis’ Üç Telli written for López.


The culture here is less one of sparring and more one of unified rapport which sees them navigate thrillingly rhythmic melodies like athletes moving fluently and continuous- ly up and down terraces, underpinning their work with deep chords which plunge one far into the emotional space created by the music. Both men harness thrilling energy while using tremendous instinct in their play rather than any fussy, self-conscious flourish- es. Yet passion, pleasure and poignancy are simultaneously infused into the music filling it with emotional meaning that, while sensu- al, remains unforced.


A.A.A.A.A.A.A. is a spectacularly beauti- ful piece, marked out by extraordinary delica- cy of tonal shading and dynamic as rebab, azeri, tar, santur and lyra engage in exquisite conversation. Bijan Chemirani who plays per- cussion – zarb, bendir, daf, ghatam, kanjira – is no afterthought: an integral part of the over- all trio sound, he integrates wonderfully, and his own solo on El Núvol d’Ort is spellbinding.


It may sound a strange thing to write but after I’d heard this disc quite a number of times I suddenly felt that on occasion – say with Petrakis’ airy almost dreamy, yet still rooted Saros in particular – that the musi- cians’ touch was so spot-on, so deft and sub- tle, that it was as if they themselves had sud- denly disappeared, leaving the instruments playing themselves.


l to r – Bijan Chemirani, Stelios Petrakis, Efrén Lopez


So, a magnificent disc then: definitely a high point of 2011, even though for sure its exposure and distribution may mean that few outside the Mediterranean may get to know about it. If you like it too – spread the word! A disc by the present young Mediterranean string masters whose future as veterans seems well secured by this marvellous album.


www.steliospetrakis.com/?lang=en Jan Fairley


LLIO RHYDDERCH & TOMOS WILLIAMS Carn Ingli Fflach Tradd CD331H


For me Llio Rhyd- derch of


Anglesey/Ynys Mon is at the heart of Welsh music. I’ve said it


before and I’ll say it again: it’s as if, for Irish music, Turlough Carolan was alive and play- ing now. Or like the greatest of west African kora griots, music that’s the memory of a people. Yet, astonishingly, she still doesn’t seem to be known about and cher- ished as she should be.


It’s not just that she’s the greatest living player of triple harp; it’s her ability to create melodies and variations, and to listen and improvise with the finest of subtlety and luminosity, as those who’ve had the privilege of playing with her will know. Until now her own albums have only featured harp, but here she duets on some pieces with Tomos Williams’ mistily muted trumpet or flugel- horn. Not the most obvious of counterparts, but Williams is sensitively minimal, just accentuating or responding to melody lines, giving this album an elegiac wistfulness.


There are very occasional light touches, too, of texture from another instrument: drumkit. Only brushes lightly stroking a skin, or a tish of cymbal, but I could do without them; they evoke the wrong images, an intru- sion, albeit slight and not too distracting, into the airy, natural world of Llio’s harp, into which the trumpet manages to enter without breaking the spell.


But it’s really all about Llio’s thought- filled, rippling, offsetting notes on the three parallel rows of her tall harp’s taut nylon strings. When we recorded together back in 2003, as she played she was watching, through the big window of Jens Schroeder’s then Dreamworld Studio in Pembrokeshire, evening flocks of starlings wheeling in front of the last streaks of sunlight on darkening hills. That’s my lasting image of her music.


This album is again finely recorded by


Schroeder, and its title and the artwork reflect another similar inspirational view, of the slopes of the north Pembrokeshire iron- age hill-fort of Carn Ingli near which it was recorded. Music of wind-blown sky over sweeps of grey-green and long shadow, cou- pled with an almost courtly stateliness, but full of humanity and devoid of pretension, that reaches back over the centuries.


Just listen, to this or any of her albums. Or better still, if the chance ever presents, encounter her in person; just you, and her, and the harp, in a quiet room with clear, low winter light streaming in through the win- dow.


www.fflach.co.uk Andrew Cronshaw


KATE RUSBY While Mortals Sleep Pure PRCD34


It was a great idea for Kate Rusby to make an album of the Christmas songs that have, in many cases, been exclusively sustained by of the magnificent South Yorkshire carol tradi- tion handed down through the generations on her own doorstep. Such a good idea, in fact, that this is the second time she’s done it; the first – Sweet Bells – emerging in 2008 to great approval from her legion of admirers.


Ms Rusby gets an awful lot of criticism in some quarters – partly, it seems, just for hav- ing a sweet voice that doesn’t explode from the soles of her boots and for… well, for being popular. I don’t concur with those “lit- tle girl voice” jibes. It was the unusually inti- mate beauty of her singing that seduced everyone in the first place and it’s scarcely her fault if, over a period of time, some of them got bored with it. Indeed, you forget how intoxicating her voice can be and it’s the first thing that grabs you on this album.


That all said, her desultory style hardly befits the celebratory nature of any album of Christmas songs, least of all one so closely identifying itself with the South Yorkshire carol tradition. Go into one of the village pubs where these songs are dusted down every December and you are knocked side- ways by the sheer joy with which they are belted out by ordinary folk. You will hear the choruses of Kris Kringle and Diadem explode with a roaring passion that all but punctures the keg barrels and to hear Kate singing them here in such inappropriately melan- cholic fashion not only seems to negate the essence of these carols, but also wastes a rare opportunity for her to let her hair down,


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