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– the same message he put forward on his 1999 album Maya. Stay in Mali, he told his audience then: you can be someone.


Even more appropriate now, this sober standpoint from the most travelled of men. His booking sheet is full of dates across Europe and America. On the song LA – very catchy, a real ear-worm – he sings about the joys of going to California and drinking tequila. This is a song he previously recorded with Eric Bibb, though played here with a lit- tle more oomph.


After many years with his band Bamada, the musicians here, with the exception of long-term bassist Abdoul Berthe, are all new. The playing is warm and mature. There is no drumkit. Nothing harsh. No jagged edges, nothing to snag or irritate – unless you hap- pen to dislike the banjo, which appears quite frequently. Master musicians Toumani Dia- baté on kora and Bassekou Kouyate on n’goni play guest roles on Terere, the most traditional song on the album.


Always the sound is soft and understat- ed. Singing in Malinke, Bambara, Dogon, English – and a dash of Spanish – Koité delib- erately draws on styles and rhythms from all over the country. The album closes with a solo guitar piece, a great advert for the unholy richness of Fylde guitars. It takes time to appreciate the quality of this CD. It’s under- stated and densely-woven. Live, Koité can whip it up as good as anyone, but this is not a dance record. It’s national reconciliation time for Mali. The album carries weight.


www.habibkoite.com Rick Sanders DOLLYMOPS


Wight Cockade WildGoose Records WGS397CD


There’s a principle expounded by Scots song collectors and scholars, ‘Dig where you Stand!’ and that’s pretty much what this band are committed to doing. The Dollymops, Vir- gil and Dorana Philpott and Justin Smith have stayed faithful to a vision which characterised their first album, Long Songs, by looking carefully at their own location and its song- lore. The result is once again a compelling and intelligently crafted album with lots of eyebrow raisers in the form of songs that are either unfamiliar or are presented in unfamil- iar versions. The songs on this album, there- fore, are pointing the listener at the Isle of Wight and its little known folk-song heritage. However, the band are far from insular in their approach to the business of singing and researching folk song.


The presentation is mostly a cappella with some strong and secure harmonies by the male voices being spiced and enriched by Dorana’s edgy top lines which give the whole sound an edge and a sense of musical risk-tak- ing which makes me smile a lot and remember the Young Tradition and the Watersons.


There are two tracks which use the gui- tar and, although these show considerable musical skill and are well done, they some- how break the otherwise mesmeric effect that the other tracks have created. Maybe that’s intentional? For me it was a distraction.


That aside, the presentation of the album is excellent, as one has come to expect from WildGoose. The booklet is informative, printed in full colour and with the now stan- dard Roud numbers. (A trawl of the Roud index reveals just how unusual these songs are!) The list of acknowledgements reveals yet again the ‘roadmap’ of the journey taken to assemble this collection.


This CD was a delight to listen to, and to


review. Without giving an extended or blow- by-blow track list, let me end by saying that I share the band’s philosophy about research-


ing and searching for interesting and possibly unique versions of songs. There are a couple of tracks on this album that I shall be learning and singing! Nuff said?


www.thedollymopps.co.uk Paul Davenport


TROY FAID Live By Numbers Gin House Records


Troy Faid has stopped me in my tracks, ears pricked up, twice now: once, with the bluesy 2011 CD Solus and, now, with this inventive offering. He balances cut-through-the-non- sense Scunthorpe vocals and old-soul lyrics with intricate, and often dazzling, fingerstyle guitar or banjo. Allied with the Leeds-based collective Gin House Records, Faid has some- thing worth saying.


Opening track Live By Numbers lulls its way in with its delicate babbling banjo motif and a soothing kora overdub (a man of many strings!), before biting into a snarling acous- tic anthem, railing against capitalist condi- tioning. Like a disaffected Arctic Monkey, Faid underpins his sharp lyricism – voicing a disenfranchised outsider’s reflections on modern life – with some fine catchy tunes. The songs are poignant, filled with contem- porary resonance – needless war (War And Propaganda), the distortion/manipulation of truth through language (Double Speak), poverty-induced ostracism (Lay In The Gutter) – many with an underlying theme of “escap- ing cultural value systems…imposed upon people from the established authoritarian structures” and creating your own.


The music has something to say too, bristling with gently nervous energy, some- times swinging with jazz-smoked, snare- brushed sophistication, sometimes rolling with shambolic eccentricity. Absorbing many musical influences, worldly or blues-hued, his musical partners are an accomplished team of players: double bass from Adam Richards, percussion/drums from Patrick Bannon and fiddle from Kieran O’Malley.


But as many of the tracks bear testimony,


particularly Reality Is Drunk And We Are Its Whisky, Faid himself is a demon guitar player, an acoustic fingerstylist of high degree, sometimes flashy but not overstated. And he’s a rollicking banjo player to boot. In a world where there just aren’t enough banjos, and there just isn’t enough dissent, Faid is a beacon of hope.


www.troyfaid.co.uk


Sarah Coxson Dollymops


BOBAN & MARKO MARKOVIC ORCHESTRA Gipsy Manifesto Piranha Music CD-PIR2753


Famously handed control of the orchestra on his eighteenth birthday, seven years on Marko Markovic has finally stamped his identity on every aspect of a band release – from songwrit- ing to vocals to adopting wholesale the influ- ence of friend and champion DJ Robert Soko. And while Dad, Boban, hasn’t gone away – he produces the record – it’s still an audacious and radical departure, being a set of controversial sounds that has outraged the purists.


But even the notion of a ‘purist’, in the world of Balkan brass, is a strange one. The genre, born in the military bands of Central and Eastern Europe, and vitally adopted by Roma communities, has always confidently set off in new, loud directions in order to pro- long the festivities and the dance. This pro- ject is no different, being an inevitable step towards the Balkan beats of the aforemen- tioned Soko, filtered through Marko’s happy discovery of melting-pot Berlin. These old melodies, often telling of ancient rituals and needs, have never been played ‘authentical- ly’, as such, by Balkan brass orchestras. And this is just a further intriguing take, a new bravura funk. So while Balkan Karavan might descend into knowing ‘na na na’ singalong nonsense, there is far more variety here than in a wholly Soko or Shantel release. Many of the clunking, ironic retro beats and ideas, meanwhile, are a perfect soundtrack to days of celebration and sljivovica.


Rural influence and tunes have not been abandoned. Indeed, the ferocious playing of these traditions on a grand, international and youthful stage, is exciting. In striving after a global sound, the first step might be the imposition of Soko’s beats, but there is also excellent real drumming throughout, by Misa Komljenovic, in addition to a full plugged-in combo of guitar, keyboards, bass, accordeon and jew’s harp. Fankerica Smekerica is a standout of soulful serenading, where, in a hymn to Marko’s ‘funk girl’, the effects gen- uinely surprise and excite.


The confident promenading of closer Bobanova Saga, with its passionate improvi- sations, does suggest that the journey has been stretched about as far as possible. The interesting diversion has taken the band a long, long, way from home. Perhaps far enough. It will be interesting to listen, at high volume naturally, to father and son working their way back again.


www.bobanandmarkomarkovic.com John Pheby


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