63 f
ened rhythms before winding down with the final dua (supplication) featuring voice only for a series of shorter recitations from the Qur’an.
Each dahala is usually composed of a
medley of qasidas (muslim praise songs) in Arabic or Swahili introduced by a khalifa (reader) who taps out the rhythm on a brass tray and leads the singing before the chorus and hand-held drums take over. These qasi- das often include snatches from multiple sources in much the same semi-spontaneous style as gospel, although it is the final dua that is in many ways the most complex and interesting vocal section. Designed to both calm the performers as well as conferring a blessing, interplay between the youthful lead reciting the suras and the group’s responsive “amin” escalates at such a tempo that an echo effect becomes almost discern- able at the close.
www.budamusique.com Phil Wilson
THE ATOMIC DUO Broadsides Own Label
Ah, this is a good time for the children of Woody to come out, and the Atomic Duo are loud and very proud in standing up for the downtrodden. Recorded, as it should be, in just three days, Silas Lowe on vocals and man- dolin teams up with Bad Livers founder Mark Rubin (various guitars, bass, tuba and vocals) under the guidance of the great Lloyd Maines as producer. A couple of other folk stop by as guests, but it’s really about these two. They do very much pick up Woody’s baton, focus- ing on rural America in feel and sometimes in subject matter, but mostly these are heartfelt and well-written shots against the rich and the Right. Add in a setting of a Gil Scott- Heron piece (Whitey On The Moon), a take on Scott Joplin, and a style that’s both pas- sionate and outraged. Trickle Down lays out their stall very frankly, while Key Chain Blues and Texas City take it all a step or two further. Musically it’s rough and ready, raw as leather, a hark back to the days of string bands and early bluegrass, but filtered through the same punk attitude that made the Bad Livers so wonderful. It’s in your face and has no intention of moving away anytime soon. They might not sound like him, but the Atom- ic Duo are keeping the spirit of Woody alive, just when we need him most.
www.theatomicduo.com Chris Nickson
MIKE STEVENS & MATT ANDERSEN
Push Record: The Banff Sessions Borealis Records BCD208
When blues guitarist Matt Andersen and blue- grass harmonica player Mike Stevens found themselves with a week to kill at an artists’ retreat in the Canadian town of Banff, they figured they might as well make an album.
They wrote the 11 songs there and then and recorded them at The Banff Centre’s in- house studio, aided by Grammy-winning engi- neer Thomas Geiger. “This album was written in five days, recorded in one day and mixed the next,” the duo explains. “All recording was live off the floor – no headphones, no overdubs, no edits and no processing.”
And no other musicians, either. All you’ll hear on this album is Andersen’s vocals and guitar plus Stevens’ harmonica. Far from the gutbucket affair that may sug- gest, they’ve produced a gentle, even deli- cate, album whose prevailing flavour is as much country as blues.
Treacherous Orchestra Stevens’ bluegrass roots show through in
tracks like The Mountain, a tale of hard- scrabble mining life which recalls Steve Earle and Jim Ford songs on the same topic, and Last Letter Home, a dying soldier’s farewell epistle to the family he’s leaving behind.
The first of these two songs is driven by Stevens’ chugging harmonica, which conjures a heavy-loaded coal train powering along the tracks, coupled with Andersen’s fast acoustic strum. The second alternates between verses of unaccompanied vocals and a desolate solo harmonica echoing each stanza’s phrasing as soon as the vocals drop out. Another high- light is Little Things, where Stevens steps back a little to let Andersen deliver a quiet plea of love from a man who seems to sense his wife’s already halfway out the door.
Fortunately, the album does have a jollier
side too. She Loves It All is built round a patter song listing all the many, many forms of alco- hol the song’s subject prefers to the guy who’s singing about her. That Girl Is Like A Train takes blues and country’s joint obsession with locomotive metaphors to deliberately absurd lengths: “She’s got room for a hundred men / She only lets ’em on one at a time”.
The album’s eponymous closing track is preceded by 90 seconds of silence, separating it just enough to suggest Stevens and Ander- sen recognise it’s no more than a generic blues jam. With or without this touch of filler, though, the 43 preceding minutes are well worth investigating.
http://borealisrecords.com/ Paul Slade
TREACHEROUS ORCHESTRA Origins Navigator 62
A big album… but then it should be, it’s a bloody big band. There were about 300 of them at the last count (sorry, just checked, it’s actually 12) including the outstanding – and rather fierce – young piper/whistle players Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton, Irish banjo player Eamonn Coyne, box player John Somerville and fiddle players Adam Sutherland and Innes Watson – with a collective CV that encompasses Shooglenifty, Wolfstone, Peat- bog Faeries, Salsa Celtica and Martyn Ben- nett’s wondrous Cuilinn Music. We are talking Scottish music royalty here.
They’re a great live band obviously – how could they not be? – but they do encounter a similar problem to Bellowhead (and probably every other big band who ever existed) in
how to effectively translate that huge sound they create on stage into an equally powerful beast on record. They start brilliantly, flexing their considerable muscle on the Indian- flavoured and absurdly catchy March Of The Troutsmen before the fiddles burst into over- load, leading us into more familiar knees-up territory on the blistering Superfly.
The album is filled almost to bursting point with ideas with recognisable reference points leaping between Moving Hearts, Horslips, Tannahill Weavers, Runrig, Afro Celts, Penguin Café Orchestra and… ooh, lots of others who’ve ever thrown themselves full tilt into traditional music, jazz, rock and whatever else they could think of without worrying about drowning. It’s pretty manic and they fling everything into the pot – going all funky on Look East, getting all dreamy among the flutes of Sea Of Clouds and going knob-twiddingly weird on Sea Of Okhotsk – to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable album without ever quite capturing the full majesty and excitement of their stage act.
It’s a lot of fun though and if you’re hav- ing a house party, be sure to round up all the neighbours, turn the volume up to 11 and have a gigantic street conga to Sausages.
www.treacherousorchestra.com Colin Irwin
VAAMONDE, LAMAS & ROMERO O Tambor De Prata Fol 100FOL1058
An attractive, quirky and unusual treatment of catchy Galician melodies on primarily gaita, soprano sax and accordeon, with some traditional percussion and on one track a burst of hammed-up zarzuela (light opera) style singing, from the trio of Suso Vaa- monde, Pedro Lamas and Xosé Lois Romero joined on some live concert tracks by A Coruña’s big, largely brass Municipal Band.
It seems it’s a project based on the reper- toire of the early 20th Century band Os Trin- tas de Trives, which, though from the tiny vil- lage of Trives near Ourense, was awarded a silver drum by the king of Spain for playing at his 1902 coronation, and travelled to Cuba (as did many other Galegos, but Os Trintas came back). In a slightly droll, is-this-a-joke sort of way, the sleevenotes (in Galego) ask, but don’t answer, questions about Os Trintas.
Internet research, though, does throw up what seems some genuine history and a photo, and these days it’s also the name of a gaita-band competition in Pontevedra.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84