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FRED SMITH Dust Of Uruzgan Own label no cat no


Twelve songs written while this Australian singer/songwriter was working as a diplo- mat in 2009 in Afghanistan for the Aus- tralian Foreign Office. A unique position from which to observe and not one most of us will ever be in. Fred has been in it before and produced his Bagarap Empires CD from his time spent in Bougainville in the Pacific. This time around, nothing, apart from per- haps the moon, could be further away from that experience.


The collection opens with the scene set-


ting narration Dust Of Uruzgan seen from the point of view of Private Warren in his hospital bed in Germany who is there after stepping on a booby-trap trip-wire, ending his pre- army career as a Queensland Thai boxing champ and losing his friend Benny.


Set musically in the western folk-rock tradition Fred takes most of the lead vocals and plays guitar, bass, harmonica and banjo. On A Thousand Splendid Suns and Trembling Sky Liz Frenchman takes the lead vocal and also plays double bass. About A Thousand Spendid Suns Fred says – “In my 18 months in Afghanistan I can only remember talking to an Afghan woman once… the Russians were actually quite proactive in promoting the rights of women… that all went radically backwards with the Taliban”. These are all mostly serious songs apart from Niet Swaffe- len Op De Dixie. A Dixie is a portable toilet but for a translation of the rest of title you will have to google it yourself. Written from his actual diary entries August 20th tells the story of the day that Grant Kirby and Tomas Dale, two army sappers, were killed while on patrol a week after Ramadan. The album closes with the aforementioned Trembling Sky which reminds us that at least 3.6 million Afghan people live as refugees outside their homeland, fugitives from the Taliban. The sleevenotes are packed with information helping us to interpret the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and a glossary of the modern mili- tary terms written into the songs and putting the pieces into context.


These are modern folk-rock stories by a writer of considerable talent and are acute moving observations set to music seen not from the armchair google/pedia/tube/space perspective of most of us but from the actual dust of Urguzan’s streets.


www.fredsmith.com.au Mike Cooper


THE ALBION CHRISTMAS BAND


A Sound In The Frosty Air Rooksmere Records


When you’ve got a formula that’s hitting all the right notes why tinker? Answer, you don’t! A Sound In The Frosty Air is the ideal carry-over from the Albion’s previous Yuletide offering Traditional. With a new Albion gen- eration about to come on stream, I guess this could be the last from the old guard. Fitting then that Ashley Hutchings is still flanked by such long-time associates as Simon Nicol, Simon Care and Kellie While who’ve been the backbone of this adventure since it began. There’s a breezy harmonica courtesy of whip- persnapper Will Pound, but other than that guitars and squeezebox give forth a very English seasonal frolic which probably would- n’t have sounded out of place a cen tury back.


The selections presented form a rustic, sacred miasma, which revolves around some nattily picked trad arr, a couple of Hutchings originals, thumping dance tunes and read- ings from Christmas stock. Ah, and then there’s Mad World, the old Tears For Fears


Sezen Aksu


smash, which Kellie While gets right under the skin of and delivers acoustic intimacy with a wandering Care melodeon spiral. It’s the best cut on the album, though others do deliver Yuletide grooves and atmospheres. Christ Was Born In Bethlehem is multi-tracked While. Tender and plaintive, she’s undoubt- edly the mainspring here. Shepherd’s Carol, even though of American stock, has a morris rise and fall with Simon Nicol in best yeoman voice, while Emily Smith’s Winter Song is quiet reflection, but then so was Alan Hull’s 40 years since.


The poetic and lyrical imagery is strong throughout. If it isn’t pheasants strutting in the frost, it’s icy nights, roaring fires and deep snow – hey, chances are we won’t get a white Christmas, but with A Sound In The Frosty Air, everything’s permanently December 25th and the temperature’s five below! Jolly and inti- mate, Santa may not be rocking around the Christmas tree here but if Yuletide is the time of year for hushed contemplation on the gid- diness and injustice of the world then this makes a pretty good soundtrack. Season’s greetings one and all.


www.rooksmerestudios.com Simon Jones


SEZEN AKSU ÖptümWorld Village 450019


Pop credentials don’t get much chunkier than Sezen Aksu’s. The Turkish legend was a founding voice in Turkish pop and has had an impact on the global charts as a songwriter, having written Tarkan’s international hit Simarik aka Kiss Kiss and his follow up Sikidim. Back home, she has released more than 20 albums, shifting more than 20 million units and performing to an estimated four million concert goers. All in a language native to just one country in the world. So it’s with some excitement that we approach her first internationally-licensed album.


Unsurprisingly, she’s a formidable per-


former, peerlessly fronting a CD of polished, nuanced, sophisticated pop. So, first the voice: it’s strong, experienced, still sweet enough after more than 30 years to be poppy, but more than capable of a menacing sneer. In other words if you don’t already know it, listen up, you are about to discover one of the great voices of popular music. The tunes have a hooky knack of sounding instantly familiar and are delivered with toppy, pinsharp production. Check out the retro guitar riff on Arkada¸s ¸


meanwhile, leads you on with a Simarik shuf- fle then jumps out from behind a kiosk and scares your harem pants off with a fully fledged prowling Bosphorus rocker before sitting you down with a warm and cosy Those Were The Days... hook. It’s a mixed-message, love-hate motif reflected in the lyrics – she shows her lover the door and then calls to him: “Come back, you’re dipped in honey.” And from her tone, when Sezen Aksu dips you in honey, you remain dipped. Among the spare ballads reworked from poems by the late Cemal Süreyya and rabble-rousers (Ayar), a highlight is Ah Felek Yordun Beni, an ener- gised serpent shuffle tempting and challeng- ing fate to the heavy duff hand drum.


Öptüm is like a Turkish supermarket in North London, the shelves stacked high with goodies, some familiar, some impossibly strange, but all beautifully packaged and undoubtedly appealing.


www.worldvillagemusic.com Tom Jackson


OLUF DIMITRI RØE


Meltemi – Wind Of Mykonos Etnisk Musikklubb EM31


His middle name hints that Oluf Dimitri Røe isn’t a usual Norwegian fiddler, bagpiper and singer. Born in Norway of Norwegian father and Greek mother, he grew up and studied music in both their countries. The two poles of his music are the sabouna (bagpipe) tradi- tion of Mykonos and the fiddling of Trønde- lag, but his involvements have been wider, working with such as Sámi joikers and Norwe- gian Roma musicians.


For his debut solo album he focuses mainly on Mykonos, in company with a varied cast of musicians living in Norway and some leading Greek players and Greek-resident Armenian oudist Haig Yazdjian. The result, in music both traditional and his own, is full of the sounds of Mykonos – sabouna, drums, laouto, spirited singing – sometimes in tradi- tional form, elsewhere contrasting with, for example, the accordeons of Serbian Jovan Pavlovic and Norwegian Gabriel Fliflet or the joiking of Ingor Ante Ailu Gaup in trio with the voices of Røe and Kenyan Idd Aziz.


Sarkısını Duyunca


(Life Has Come Between Us) – processed strings from an Ankara taxi take you to a spe- cial place where twang meets pang. Balli,


It’s an interesting, varied, lively listen, pleasingly not neat, and not a meet-in-the- middle fusion; simply a musician who, like many, is the sum of the influences and attrac- tions of a varied geographical and musical background, bringing in open-minded others to express his own personal tradition.


www.emcd.no Andrew Cronshaw


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