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right amusing content with the right tonal balance, recording and mix. It’s the kind of product that, when faced with the choice in a music shop, you unwaveringly take it off the shelf and to the counter.


At home you turn it over in your hands. Packaging that’s collectible, more than just attractive and informative, which promotes German, English and some Shona language in the introduction, narration and lyrics.


The front cover tells you exactly what


you’re getting: Mystic Mbira Music of Zim- babwe, Chartwell’s recording label, Ingoma and local (British) artwork. It all smacks of Chartwell’s love of bringing together new forces (and different origins) to reinvigorate the traditional ways and to demonstrate the natural synchronicity of the old and the con- temporary.


Musically, it’s not a new collaboration; Chartwell has combined forces with these two German friends Sebastien Pott and Elmar Pohl over almost 20 years. Friends and musi- cians, Pott is an mbira maker as well as drum- mer and mbirist, who has made a very credi- ble living out of his craft. All the mbiras used in the recording were made by him. Elmar Pohl has played frequently over the years with Spirit Talk Mbira. Another of the Spirit Talk gang, Chris Morphitis, has engineered the recording to its true conclusion. A vintage first release from a wonderfully experienced crew. You can hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 48 compilation.


www.chartwelldutiro.com www.mbira-academy.org.uk


Zuzana Novak


ARTÚS Artús PAGANS PA004


This, the fourth release from self-styled Biscay radicals Familha Artús, is based on the Occitan language poetry of Bernard Manciet, itself founded on traditional tales and legends collected between 1961 and 1964 and reworked in collaboration


with Hubert Cahuzac.


Those of us whose language skills aren’t up to the task of understanding the poetry can take as read that its dreamlike, psychedelic imagery permeates the uncom- promising, often startling and frequently thrilling music that Artús have created here to accompany it.


The album opens with a short introduc- tion of jagged chanting and muscular percus- sion, before yielding to a monstrous, Blowz- abella-meets-Killing Joke, hurdy-gurdy, bass and guitar assault that is every bit as heavy as you’d expect from any band who would name their record label PAGANS, express a preference for the alto hurdy-gurdy as “the most serious,” and list one of their number as supplying “Dark Energy” in the musician credits.


For all that, it’s not quite all doom and gloom as this, at its heart, is traditional dance music –music that pulses rather than plods, even incorporating elements of techno (albeit with the rhythmic angularity of post- punk and progressive rock and the power of metal). This music isn’t the kind of ‘folk-rock’ that requires a hyphen, but rather the work of expert musicians (or, as they prefer, “Artúsans”) wholly dedicated to crafting their sound, whether that be by creating new, hybrid forms of traditional, regional instruments, or the deployment of computers and electronic effects.


Anyone who still thinks that ‘folk’ or ‘traditional’ must only ever equate to ‘acous- tic, easy-listening’ may find this an uncom-


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