51 f
matic, she just sings these songs of love, long- ing and loss like she means every word. The electronics and looping don’t get ideas above their station, adding a little colour or a beat to the overall sound. I like things best when they’re slow and haunting, as on Halassia Mou and the closing Rodise I Anatolie, which features just Kristi and her harmonium.
A low key gem that promises much for
the duo’s planned UK tour later this year.
www.krististassinopoulou.com
Jamie Renton
AMADOU & MARIAM Folila Because BEC 5161152
To say that Amadou & Mariam’s latest is relentless would be an understatement. Who’d have thought, when we unfashion- able world folkniks used to return with cas- settes of ‘the blind couple of Mali’ from West Africa or the shops of Barbès back in the last century, that a dozen years into the 21st they’d be cranking out dense, stadium- friendly music like this. After successfully crashing through the Euro-chart barriers with their cute Manu Chao album and then fol- lowing it up with their made-for-the-Observ- er Damon Albarn one, there were only two ways this one could have gone – back to the roots or onwards into the rockasphere: they chose the latter, apparently because they’ve not yet cracked the American market in the way they have Europe’s.
Amused by watching other reviewers trotting out the names on the press release in a pretend-knowledgeable way, I fully admit to having had to use Mr Google to find out who some of the featured guests actually were: it turns out that a number are appar- ently hipster gold dust. MIA-like Santigold’s vocals are embedded in blistering opener Dougou Badia; Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of something called TV On The Radio superimpose some English vocals onto the almost Tuareg-like lope of Wily Katso; one of the Scissor Sisters features on the driving Metemya, which comes over somewhere between Sympathy For The Devil and an old fashioned soul review and may be the best track; a black Brit singer-songwriteress called Ebony Bones contributes to the short, poppy C’est Pas Facile Pour Les Aigles which has hints of all those post-Vampire Weekend bands; and jazz funk veteran Amp Fiddler wobbles his vocals over Wari.
Amadou & Mariam
Statutory rapper Theophilus London detracts, frankly, the globalised predictability of hip-hop rearing its tedious head. And homicidal French rock star Bernard Cantat’s vocals don’t, to be honest, add a great deal at all – Mogo with a bass clarinet and Bassekou Kouyate’s ngoni in the mix would certainly have fared better without – though his guitar work sits nicely in there, as does that of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner on the openers. But regardless of who’s doing what to who, the whole thing blazes along with long-time minder Marc Antoine Moreau’s massive multi-layered production dominated by (mostly) Amadou’s searing guitar. It really is a magnificently big noise.
However, when it briefly drops back to just the couple themselves plus Cantat’s har- monica, Zumana Tereta’s one-string soku fid- dle, a kameln’goni and calabash on Sans Toi, it’s such a glorious standout that you really do wonder whether all the rest was actually necessary. They do the trick again at the end, mostly with hardly more than guitar and Toumani Diabate’s kora, if somewhat over- egged with a kids’ chorus. So perhaps the return-to-the-roots album next time, eh? If they could deliver it with the raw energy of this one it’d be a killer.
Finally, a word about the sumptuous,
arty package – a quality triple-fold digipak plus booklet in a substantial slip case. Except that the reduced spidery handwritten book- let notes superimposed over photographs are absolutely illegible, even with a magnifying glass. What could have been near to exem- plary packaging that’s a total fail on user- friendliness.
www.because.tv Ian Anderson THE UNTHANKS
Diversions Vol 1: The Songs Of Robert Wyatt & Antony & The Johnsons Rabblerouser RRM009
After thumping the table in a petulant rage while arguing for Antony & The Johnsons to get the verdict over some goddawful rock band (Hard Fi as it happens) in a particularly animated Mercury Music Prize judging ses- sion in 2005, I can only applaud the sheer craziness of this rather bizarre project. Robert Wyatt’s Sea Song played a starring role on the Unthanks’ own Mercury-nominated album The Bairns and, though they never
Photo: Judith Burrows
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