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fRoots 53 : your free album
Our pick of the very best new stuff. Load it onto your iPod or computer or burn it to CD – we give you the insert artwork too. Go get it!
H
ere’s the latest in our long series of carefully crafted and sought-after compilations that are designed to let you hear the best music – mostly on
small independent labels – that our writers get enthusiastic about in the pages of fRoots. Listen, then buy the original CDs!
No sooner had his Galiza album won last
year’s best-dressed, but Basque squeezebox king Kepa Junkera popped up with another 156-page hardback –wrapped around his latest masterwork telling the history of the local trikitixa music, teamed with teenage pandereiteras and singers Sorginak.
When a reliable and well-considered artist suddenly makes a great leap forward, as if from nowhere, it’s known in these parts as “doing an Emmylou”. So Bella Hardy’s extraordinary new Ben Seal-produced album With The Dawn shall henceforth be known as her Wrecking Ball.
In fRoots-land, if you’ve heard of Paul
Bradley it’ll be as the self-effacing upside- down acoustic guitarist in Bristol’s minimal- ist trio Three Cane Whale. Elsewhere, shy, retiring and minimalist he’s anything but – as proved by his first solo album which will flabber many a gast with its creative variety.
Anna & Elizabeth are a duo of Anna Roberts-Gevalt (fiddle, banjo, guitar and harmonies) and Elizabeth LaPrelle (ballads, banjo), who have a shared desire to inspire people with the beautiful soul of Appalachi- an roots music. It would be an understate- ment to say they succeed!
If you know anything about Malian music, you will be very impressed by the pedigree of Trio Da Kali. Singer Hawa is the daughter of Kasse Mady Diabaté, ngoni
player Mamadou is the son of Bassekou Kouyaté, and Lassana Diabaté is simply one of the best balafon players there is.
Torupilli Jussi was a legendary Estonian traditional bagpiper with a rhythmic play- ing technique and versatile repertoire. The three women of Torupilli Jussi Trio –two fiddlers, Eeva Talsi and Karoliina Keintaal, and bagpipe player Cätlin Mägi – are dedi- cated to keeping his music alive.
Really, you only have to hear who the
members of Leveret are – melodeon player Andy Cutting, fiddler Sam Sweeney and concertina player Rob Harbron – and you already know that their sublime, effortless take on English instrumental music will be among the best around.
Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker were
on fRoots 52 with a track from their highly regarded latest album – and on our March 2015 cover. In the year of Bob Copper’s cen- tenary they’ve specially recorded a version of a Copper Family Greatest Hit for us and it’s as gorgeous as you might imagine.
A teenage Hannah Sanders started singing folk songs with her family, The Dunns. She left music for a time to pursue a career as a cultural anthropologist in the USA, but recently returned to Britain per- forming the songs she has known and loved for years, and making a striking debut CD.
Finnish five-string fiddler / singer Suvi Oskala first caught our attention in the Swedish-Finnish trio Pelios, and now has gripped it entirely with her latest three- piece SO III. With Oscar Lehtonen on per- cussion and vocals and Teemu Korpipää on live electronics, that’s one original line-up!
The press release with Canadian song- writer Jon Brooks’ fifth album boasts that
it has a death count of 75! That’s because it’s a set of new and remodelled murder bal- lads for the 21st Century. “I’ve already done four albums that inspire: it’s now time to offend” is his admirable stated philosophy!
The great Ali Farka Touré supposedly disliked the term ‘desert blues’, but guitar- slinger Samba Touré (no close relation) is clearly at ease with the notion on his latest CD, not to mention creating a good dose of blues rock straight out of his northern Malian roots as well.
Beth Porter is the go-to cello player for the English folk scene, regularly popping up with the likes of Eliza Carthy and Bellow- head, let alone large swathes of the world of popular music. But somehow she also finds time to create her own songs and per- form them with her band The Availables.
Taking time out from grungy Saskatchewan folk roots band The Deep Dark Woods, Ryan Boldt teamed up with Clayton Linthicum of Kacy & Clayton fame (fRoots 49) to craft a stripped-down album of traditional ballads, many apparently sourced from our very own Shirley Collins.
There were two Italian roots bands who made big marks in the UK in the 1980s – La Ciapa Rusa from the north and Re Niliu from the deep south of Calabria. The latter went missing in action in the mid ’90s but miraculously are back in action two decades later and as thrilling as ever.
And finally, some live recordings have emerged from the 1970s of a real legend, the late American ‘zen banjo’ player Der- roll Adams. He came to Europe in the 1950s with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and never went home, becoming a guru for many. Now that’s what we call banjo playing!
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