57 f


Carter’s conflicted mood on these songs take him into tougher, even bleaker areas. The self-explanatory Dark Days offers ugly realism and a jangling beat, while Taunting The Dog is positively furious, pitched around Evan Jenkins’ frantic drumming, Neil Cowley’s growly keyboards and Carter’s own violent electric guitar. No problem with that – like one of his heroes, Richard Thompson, Carter has the ability to enthral in any environment with just one climactic chord when he moves effortlessly into rock guitar mode and the jagged contrast to his softer side makes it all the more effective.


Indeed, he has much in common with Thompson in this regard, although the mix of full-blooded rock and considered singer- songwritery thoughtfulness does occasionally make for an uneven balance, as perhaps encapsulated by Drop The Bomb, which opens in sanguine tones over tinkling piano before broodingly developing into a wailing banshee of a climax. It’s unnerving stuff, like the amenable, sensitive cousin who suddenly turns into a raging bull without warning. But around every corner Sam Sweeney seemingly lurks with his empathetic strings to soften the blow and reassure you that all is well.


You have to admire Carter’s bravery, ambition and his eagerness to develop and plunder virgin territory – this is a far, far cry from the commendably explorative The No Testament, which is itself a million miles from his folk-rock extravaganzas with Jim Moray in False Lights. And in linking up with producer Dom Monks there is clear intent to move to a different plane, stylistically and perhaps career-wise too.


He has such an abundance of natural


talent, you will him on all the way, but fear the rockier end of the equation may founder on deaf ears.


www.samcartermusic.co.uk Colin Irwin


VOŁOSI Nomadism Unzipped Fly UFCD 008


Bowed strings (two violins, viola, cello and double bass) in very mittel-European music (in its culturally fertile, not political sense) evoking the surging passion and vir- tuosity of folk music with the rich tone and harmonic range of classical.


When Vołosi’s excellent first CD came out in 2011 the band was named Wołosi I Laso- niowie, being a collaboration between the traditional trio Wołosi from Trojwies in Poland’s Beskidy highlands and classical violin- ist and cellist brothers Krzysztof and Stanisław Lason from Katowice. The same album was later re-released with the band name changed to the simpler Vołosi (‘vowosi’).


Their WOMEX 2014 showcase was impressive, a thrilling sound, the quintet playing standing up (except for cellist and main composer Stanisław), and while some there found the element of hyperactive Paganini-ism rather on the flashy side there’s nothing wrong with showmanship nor technical brilliance as long as the music is real and sincere.


This second album would command any-


one’s attention. But, while there’s no doubt- ing the genuine spirit of the band, there is something of a feeling this time that the material is tending to be a vehicle for the vio- linistics. There are sparser, more reflective phases such as the misty, whispery Grey Hour, and surging slow emotiveness as in Sad Val- ley, but the up-tempo pieces, while dazzling, show signs of becoming a bit formulaic. Sec- ond album syndrome perhaps.


As the band deservedly gig wider and


wider, to hit the new audiences with their most exciting material is an inevitable pres- sure, but I hope as things roll on as they should they find time to pause and plunge back into deeper wellsprings.


Still stirring, uplifting stuff though. www.uzf.com.pl


Andrew Cronshaw


VARIOUS ARTISTS It Was Mighty Topic TSCD679T


It Was Great Altogether Topic TSCD680T


Access to the Peter Kennedy archive has liber- ated a veritable treasure chest of valuable material to re-invigorate Topic’s precious Voice Of The People series.


Collated by the sainted Reg Hall, these two volumes of triple CDs, which draw not just on the Kennedy archive at the British Library but Topic’s own catalogue and various private recordings, tell the story of Irish music in London from the 1940s onwards – helping to keep the music vibrant through periods of decline back home – in exhaustive detail.


These were the days when the Irish pubs in London – the likes of the Bedford, the Favourite, the Laurel Tree, the Camden Stores, the Mornington Arms, the Victoria et al – had sawdust on the floor and immigrant musicians and audience alike would arrive direct from work in the construction industry or wherever, to share tunes and lose them- selves in a rarefied musical culture shaped and ingrained in them by the farming com- munities of rural Ireland.


“The young immigrants in London saw themselves as up-and-coming, facing a new life in a strange new environment,” writes Hall in his characteristically informative notes, “but they actually carried a deep imprint of the ways of their parents and grandparents and their attitude to their music reflected the experience of their upbringing in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.”


In this informal environment, names now considered Irish music colossi emerged. The great Waterford fiddler Jimmy Power. Other fiddle heroes like Bobby Casey, Michael Gorman, Danny Meehan, Martin Byrnes and Julia Clifford populate these recordings alongside flautists, accordeonists, pianists and banjo players. The great uilleann piper Willie Clancy even pops up, as does flute leg- end Seamus Tansey playing tambourine, of all things, behind Eddie Corcoran’s tin whistle, with Reg Hall – a central figure in that Lon- don Irish pub scene himself for many years – accompanying many of them on piano.


These are players immersed not merely in their tunes, but the whole culture, the


entire history, the very people they represent. And listening to them now, at a point when Ireland has a very different mindset and sta- tus both at home and abroad, they have acquired a wholly different sense of values, centred on sessions that may have originally been seen as humble nostalgia and escapism, but from which we can now properly assess the true beauty and the emotional depth of the music and musicians and the historical importance they represent.


Six CDs across the two packages. Nearly 200 tunes, over 100 musicians, a 100-page booklets with each one… and what a glori- ous insight into a certain time and place, the community that arose around it and the proud, exciting, uplifting and inspirational musical psyche it provoked. For anyone with even a passing interest in Irish music, these two collections – the first from the early days, the second representing the continuing tradi- tion – are essential.


www.topicrecords.co.uk


www.topicrecords.co.uk/category/the- voice-of-the-people/ Colin Irwin


KONONO No1 & BATIDA


Konono No1 Meets Batida Crammed Discs cram 261


Born in Angola and raised in the Lisbon sub- urbs, DJ-producer Batida (Pedro Coquenão, aka DJ Mpula) started to mix his beats with Konono No1 songs on his radio broadcasts as early as 2007, and no less than Björk, Herbie Hancock, Jeff Beck, India.Arie, Juana Molina, and Oumou Sangare have tuned in to the Konono frequency. But it was not until late 2014 that Crammed Discs head Marc Hollan- der brought the Konono and Batida together. They jammed, traded musical ideas, became friends, and worked out the modus operandi heard on this disc.


It’s always risky when Western produc- ers engage with traditional practitioners: careerist ambitions, power relations shaped by economic and historical inequities, diver- gent aesthetic notions, and deeply-held cul- tural assumptions can undermine the best of artistic intentions (for confirmation, just scan the ‘world-music-fusion’ remainders bin). But Konono No1 Meets Batida docu- ments an abundant meeting of equals, where Congo lese Bakongo call-and- response voices and percussion converge with the rootless cosmo politan, trance- dance, electro-acoustic avant-garde, the startling hybrid invention of a transcendent cultural and sonic curiosity without regard for received artistic bounds.


crammed.be Michael Stone


Benny McHugh, Reg Hall, Seanin McDonagh & Liam Farrell, 2010


Photo: Ken Lees


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