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harp here and there, while the double bass of Jody Weger underpins the dancing vocal on an engrossing Henry Martin.
Anyone who fell hopelessly for Meg
Baird’s Dear Companion in 2007 will find much to love about this album. Credit is also due to producer Ryan Boldt (lead singer of Deep Dark Woods, for whom Linthicum plays guitar) for his role in crafting this fine folk record, timeless and true.
Read about them on page 19.
www.kacyandclayton.com
Steve Hunt
KASAI ALLSTARS Beware The Fetish Crammed Discs cram 233
In 2008, their first album was worth your money for the title alone. In The 7th Moon The Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish And Ate The Head Of His Enemy By Magic twinned home-made science-fiction electron- ica with likembe thumb piano, powerful rhythms and the most beautiful choral and guitar effects. Sheets of magic sound, some- what less raucous and at-your-throat than stablemates Konono No 1, drew us in to a tin- gling forest echoing with static. Truly marvel- lous, and recognised as such as the world fell for roots revival African music.
This new album, six years later, fifth in
the Congotronics series, packs even more of a wallop than its predecessor. Two CDs (or vinyl, of course) of village music that open with the familiar forest texture – high and clear – until all is barged to one side by a ludicrously bass-drum heavy miscegenation of some kind of primeval soukous with chat- tering electronic fuzz. You will take notice. The bass drum rules. The fuzz talks. This is serious! This is correct!
If ever music was designed to hit multi- ple pleasure centres at once, this is it: the sheer cleverness of it all, the way the body blows match the beauty of the guitar, the dance and the trance, the unashamed repeti- tions, the scratchy bumblebee-trapped-in-a- bottle thing, the relentless conversation and declamation of the voices. And, crucially, the faithfulness to traditional time-tested forms. This is strange music that knows exactly what it’s up to.
What is even stranger is that the musi- cians are all from Kinshasa. Not men of the forest but city dwellers, looking back to their rural roots. And the song titles are suitably evocative. Just one example: As They Walked Into The Forest On A Sunday, They Encoun- tered Apes Dressed As Humans.
Got to love it.
www.crammed.be
Rick Sanders
VARIOUS ARTISTS The Barley Mow Topic TSCD676D
The Flax In Bloom Topic TSCD677 Orkney Topic TSCD678
“Good Humour For The Rest Of The Night” Topic TSCD675
Another batch of recordings from the Peter Kennedy archive = another Topic Voice Of The People series = another precious booty of invaluable gems of traditional music and song from various parts of Britain and Ireland that any self-respecting devotee of the form will gobble up instantly.
Given the now familiar impeccable pack- aging, highlighted as ever by the inestimable Reg Hall’s exhaustive, insightful notes and fascinating pictures (check out the shot of the 90-year-old Donegal singer Sheila Gallagher
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