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fRoots magazine is the essential resource for folk, roots and world music – local music from out there. We’ve always been central to the UK folk scene and were the pioneering, original world music magazine from year zero. We constantly support new young artists while celebrating the established: joining up the dots.
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This capacity to inject genuine freshness into well-worn themes and ideas is ably demonstrated by their mesmerising banjo arrangement of the Incredible String Band classic October Song (on this issue’s fRoots 44 compilation) while the old-timey influence is underlined by a lively treatment of The Facto- ry Girl, neatly intertwined with the lovely tune Shenandoah Falls. Their willingness to revisit folk music history – not just for materi- al but for its integral spirit – is one of the facets that makes the album so appealing, as proven by their thoughtful rejuvenation of Bread And Roses, inextricably linked with the women textile workers’ strike of Massachus- setts in 1912 (and a question that defeated the Eggheads team on TV recently, triv fans!).
It may not be instantly obvious, but this is an album of substance and depth.
www.rootbeatrecords.co.uk Colin Irwin OWINY SIGOMA BAND
Power Punch Brownswood Recordings BWOOD096CDP
Lots of great rhythms and Kenyan nyatiti lute and lots of ASDIC submarine noises – this Anglo-Kenyan band liken themselves to kraut - rock bands of the ’70s and see their music as a kind of African psychedelic jam band. It began when four members of a London-based music collective went to Nairobi and met a master of the nyatiti – the small Luo lute as played by Ayub Ogada – and a master of percussion. They hit it off. Time in a studio was booked and an album produced. This one now is their second, recorded in London. It’s a thoroughly successful creation, mixing imaginative elec- tro and electric guitars with the Kenyan ele- ments – which includes some some exuberant singing. The band say their aim is a kind of sweaty hypnosis, but what’s surprising about the album is the amount of space in it – easy- moving, surprisingly airy, very up.
www.brownswoodrecordings.com Rick Sanders
PHARIS & JASON ROMERO
Long Gone Out West BluesLula Records LULA 1303
The second duo release from Pharis and Jason Romero sees a bedding-in of the timeless sound first witnessed on Passing Glimpse. Their easy intimacy, the symbiotic interaction of their voices and instruments and the happy balance of new old-time Canadian/American songwriting with some vintage classics create a comfortable armchair of a sound.
Pharis and Jason live together and work together – making banjos, music and a hands- on backwoods life with each other in BC. This closeness is naturally reflected in the sound they make. Pharis’ bright, lustrous, chiming voice – taking the lion’s share of lead vocals here – tempered with the warm copper tones of Jason’s harmonies, harmonies which sit deliciously and recklessly on the edge of safety.
On Long Gone Out West Blues, there is an increase in new songwriting from Pharis; some raw hurting songs – I Want To Be Lucky, The Little Things Are Hardest In The End – which pay homage to the couple’s immersion in vintage country recording and old-time aesthetic, but reflect their own sense of place and space. Alongside these, a passing glimpse into their listening habits and loves. Their lov- ing arrangements of traditional material – Wild Bill Jones, with Jason on lead vocal duties, and It Just Suits Me, learned from Lomax’s Georgia Sea Island recording of Bessie Jones and Hobart Smith – are note worthy.
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