69 f THE RESIDENT CARDS
We Won’t Leave Any Trace No label, no cat no
You have to hand it to Erica Buettner – the woman has talent. Not content with releas- ing an excellent solo album, she’s also (along with fellow expat American Dana Boulé) half of the Resident Cards, who’ve handed in this rather good disc of their own, the songs more outgoing that Buettner’s solo work. Starting out with Gotta Shed The Old Skin (a mani- festo if ever I heard one – although the verse melody does seem to echo CSNY’s Ohio). There are excellent harmonies and subtle per- cussion throughout by Boris Gronemberger, and proof that you can do a lot with guitar, banjo, a couple of keyboards and two voices. There are dreamy moments, such as the mid- dle section of Lie To Me, but they do resolve themselves. There’s a light, airy, sometimes playful quality to all this, and a sense that it wouldn’t have sounded too far out of place about 1972. Not dated at all, more timeless, and in spite of the sad lyrics, there’s delight and a little dance in Parisian Clouds. It’s an enchanting album, and there’s the promise of many more good things ahead.
www.theresidentcards.wordpress.com Chris Nickson VARIOUS ARTISTS
Far In The Mountains Volume 5. Echoes from the Mountains Musical Traditions Records MTCD513
The music on this CD was recorded during three collecting trips Mike Yates made to the Appalachian mountains, in 1979, 1980 and 1983. It follows four previous volumes, released over two double CD sets, by Musical Traditions in 2002.
As is the way of these things (elderly, non-professional performers, recorded direct- to-tape) there’s plenty of clanking, scraping, scratching and wobbly vocal pitching going on, but (one or two tracks that only a folk- lorist could love, notwithstanding) that’s gen- erally all to the good, right? Anyone who’s ever sought an antidote to the anodyne, via the clattering euphoria of the early Holy Modal Rounders records, or the charged intensity of Cordelia’s Dad, will find much to love here.
With the majority of the 43 tracks clock- ing in at under two minutes, the whole thing clips along with a real sense of urgency right from the opening, slightly anarchic fiddle and banjo salvo from William Marshall & Howard Hall with Train On The Island and Polly Put The Kettle On. While all of these performers’ names are unfamiliar to me, many are worthy of note, including those of Ted Boyd, Charlie Woods and Benton Flippen (all excellent five- string banjo players), singer Eunice Yeatts MacAlexander, and the impressively versatile guitars (and banjo) of Walt Davis & J C McCool who deservedly get five tracks to dis- play their flat-picking swing.
Those expecting the long ‘English’ bal- lads that drew Cecil Sharp to the Appalachi- ans will need to look elsewhere, but if you’re after genuine, life-affirming performances of fiddle and banjo tunes, or paeans to various animal species (Daddy Had A Billy Goat, The Preacher And The Bear, Granny Will Your Dog Bite) then you’ve come to the right place.
The CD is packaged in the now-familiar
Musical Traditions DVD case, with a 24-page booklet of information about the performers and the tunes and songs. A snigger and a grin is included with every purchase.
www.mtrecords.co.uk/ Steve Hunt
DJØNNE & BORSHEIM Toras Dans Fivreld FIV02
JORUN MARIE KVERNBERG & ØYVIND SANDUM Tidens Løsen Ta:lik TA1 10CD
SANDÉN-WARG, BERGLUND, RYDBERG, LUND, GORSET, CLAESON Schodsbergs Notebok Ta:lik TA92CD
If elegant guitarist, hardanger fiddler and poised singer Annlaug Borsheim were British and singing in English, she’d be a doyenne of the new UK folk wave, and indeed her last CD, November, was recorded in Scotland with well-known Scots folk musicians.
Over the past couple of years Annlaug has been performing with Norwegian cham- pion diatonic accordeonist Rannveig Djønne, a leader among the new breed of subtle play- ers who are raising the instrument’s value and esteem in Norwegian traditional music.
Here on their debut duo album they gel finely in a luminous set of traditional and their own songs and tunes rooted in their native Hardanger. It will doubtless feature in this year’s Norwegian folk awards. UK distri- bution by Proper.
www.propermusic.com www.musikklosen.no
Gamaldans music – the central European couple-dance musical forms such as polka, waltz, mazurka and reinlender that arrived in Norway in the 19th Century – has in recent decades been the preserve of usually insensi- tive and unimaginative bands, dominated by big accordeons with guitar and bass, smiling in tacky photos on garish album sleeves.
Mostly it still is, but lately some of the younger musicians in the traditional music revival (which instrumentally has been largely an arena of the older, subtler Norwegian dance musics such as springar and halling) have begun to look again at the derided gamaldans and have approached it with more sensitive playing, in which the fiddle regains at least equal position with the accordeon and the music becomes more wor- thy of listening than simply a dance-support- ing oom-cha.
Majorstuen, Tindra and Unni Boksasp Ensemble fiddler Jorun Marie Kvernberg was turned on to gamaldans by coming across
first a cassette of, and then in person, fiddler Ole P Blø (1920-2010) from the island of Midøya, who played these tunes all his life. She was much taken by his playing and its subtleties, and this CD, in which diatonic accordeonist Øyvind Sandum joins her, is the result. The music and the packaging have a sepia-toned, period feel; the playing is finely light and delicate, far from the bland brutali- ty of most gamaldans bands but much more dance-inspiring and pleasant to listen to. UK distribution by Discovery.
www.discovery-records.com www.talik.no
In the days before radio, fiddlers in Nor-
way, as in Britain, would often play tunes from a mixture of genres, and jot them down in their music notebooks.
That’s what Johannes Nielsen Schods- berg, of Østfold county, did during the 1820s. For Schodsbergs Notebok Daniel Sandén- Warg and Mats Berglund play, on fiddles, moraharpa and octave hardanger fiddle, nine tracks of the paalsdanses, riils and a wedding dance he noted down in fluent pen-script from his local tradition. Then a quartet of baroque violin, flute or recorder, guitar or theorbo and cello play, in the classically-influ- enced, harmonised, arranged style of the time, twelve in his manuscript book that came from the wider Europe: minuets, quadrilles, waltzes, marches, a reel, and a recognisably English engelsk dans. UK distri- bution by Discovery.
www.discovery-records.com www.talik.no
Andrew Cronshaw
VARIOUS ARTISTS Mr Lud’s Song Luddites 200
A scant few months past the 200th anniver- sary of one of the most celebrated/ notorious workers’ movements, their contemporary namesakes dream up a 21st Century celebra- tion CD of Luddite music by way of obser- vance. We’ve come mistakenly to think of a Luddite as anyone who’s opposed to advances in technology, but really the Lud- dites were only cheesed off with those machines that automated and threatened the livelihood of the skilled worker. You can have your own debate about how that plays out in 2013. Meantime on the CD, those you’ve never heard of line up beside those you certainly have, those you own recordings
The Resident Cards
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