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patterns of rhythm or melody stirring some uncanny recognition. It all works together. Each composed note feels to have been medi- tated over, and whether the texture is focus- ing on sparse, singular notes or massed, arpeggiated runs, there never seems to be more or less than is needed, musically or instrumentally.
The arrangements here are for quartet –
Brahem’s oud plus piano, bass clarinet and bass – and string orchestra – Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, conducted by Pietro Mianiti. With a string orchestra at hand, it would have been all too easy for Brahem to overuse the voices and power that can bring. Subtlety comes through yet again, however. Sound comes in well-weighted bursts and swelling waves, the orchestra often providing the soundscape for the quartet to explore and make its own, with the strings offering breezes of their own sympathetic story.
Souvenance is an impressive and intelli- gent work, a credit to Anouar Brahem as a composer and both the quartet and orchestra as musicians. A perfect combination of the classical styles of North Africa, Europe and African-America.
www.ecmrecords.com Jim Hickson
DEAD RAT ORCHESTRA Tyburnia antigen records antigen 151
Tyburnia is the soundtrack to James Holcombe’s film Tyburnia: A Radical History Of 600 Years Of Public Execu- tion, performed by Nathaniel Mann, Daniel Merrill and Lisa Knapp.
“For over 700 years there was a site of execution
at Tyburn in London. Here those who fell foul of political, religious and judicial reforms enacted by the state were executed for public entertainment and instruction. A study of those executed at Tyburn charts a history of the UK, illustrating the twists and turns of monarchical and political whimsy, church and state, and the birth of capitalism.”
The Dead Rat Orchestra’s acknowledged genius is for immersive, site-specific perfor- mance, so the capturing of their unique essence on disc is a an impressive, nay aston- ishing feat. Rediscovered 16th and 17th Cen- tury execution broadside ballads are to set to contemporaneous melodies and intercut with field recordings, musique concrète and lines sung in the arcane thieves’ cant. The action switches constantly between past and pre- sent, each throwing the other into dazzlingly sharp focus. A silver band strikes up a mourn- ful Abide With Me. A present-day street ora- tor declares: “There’s always been oppressors and the oppressed, the possessors and the dispossessed!” A Defence Of Women (written by Ester Sowernam as a riposte to An Arraignment Of Women) is brilliantly sung unaccompanied by Lisa Knapp. A crowd of people scream. The Black Procession (from The Triumph Of Wit, by J Shirley) builds in intensity and pace to an almost unbearably oppressive climax.
Mounted in a 32-page, A5 booklet, con- taining lyrics and stills from the film, Tyburnia is a brilliantly conceived, meticulously researched and compellingly delivered piece of work that challenges and coerces the lis- tener to both muse on the past and consider the present state of power, punishment and dissent.
“To Tyburn we must make our way to view that Crabbed Tree, and when we have no more to say, then hey boys up go we.”
www.deadratorchestra.co.uk Steve Hunt
STEVE TILSTON Truth To Tell Hubris HUB008
So… John Lennon sends you a fan letter at the height of Beatlemania. It gets lost in the post but re-surfaces sev- eral decades later and Al Pacino plays you in a movie loosely based on the story. What happens next?Nowt dramatic. You just carry on,
as ever, writing and performing quality songs reflecting various aspects of the human spirit based on personal encounters, powerful memories, and shared experiences. When you write and play with such clarity, wit and ingrained emotion as Tilston, it tends to be enough.
Opening track Grass Days, for one, is a
beauty, poetically reflecting – with liberal ref- erence to his peers and borrowing lines from their greatest hits – on his early days as a struggling musician in London. There’s plenty of pain, too, on this album, especially with The Way It Was, a tribute to a fallen friend, the violinist and composer Stuart Gordon. This recurring theme of thoughtful melan- cholia is further reiterated by the gently lyri- cal The Riverman Has Gone, partly inspired by and partly delivered in the style of Nick Drake, conjecturing bleakly on the values of modern society. There’s more sombre reflec- tion as he maintains one sad eye on the past in Bygone Lands and another, more fearful one of the future on Running Out Of Road.
One of the most tragic songs in the tradi-
tional canon, Died For Love, is also executed with shivering intensity; and yet the album as a whole isn’t as bleak as this may all make it sound. Lasting Love comes with an engaging African rhythm; despite its theme of parting Yo Me Voy has a beguiling freshness; and when all else fails, the intricate guitar instru- mental Pecket’s Well offers tranquil refuge.
And, if Pick Up Your Heart might be interpreted as the older musician having a rueful conversation with his younger self, there’s a degree of resigned satisfaction about the lot of the travelling troubadour in All Around This World. You like to think John Lennon would have loved it. Not so sure about Al Pacino.
www.stevetilston.com Colin Irwin Steve Tilston
AMADOU BALAKÉ In Conclusion Sterns Africa STCD1125
Amadou Balaké was the towering character in Burki- na Faso’s popular music scene for more than 60 years. Probably best known to Western listeners through his four-year participation in Ibrahima Sylla’s Latin-African Africando project, he had
already recorded with top salsa musicians in New York. He died in Ougadougou in 2014 and these are his final recordings, a varied batch of songs recorded with rising young Burkinabé musicians. He covers the ground from soul to something between mbalax and afrobeat, from traditional rhythms to snappy funk, with a voice generally warm and con- versational. But always a sense of passion in reserve; he emerges as a fascinating figure of great scope and authority.
www.sternsmusic.com Rick Sanders
ATTWENGER spot Trikont US-0462-2
In 2007 Prague’s MOFFOM film festival screened Attwenger Adventure. A stew of hand-held home movie footage, television clips and new scenarios, its director Markus Kaiser- Mühlecker tells the story of the Austrian, Linz- based duo Attwenger. Founded in 1990, they still remain Markus Binder on rhythm instru- ments and electronics, and Hans-Peter Falkner on electric and button melodeons.
Attwenger live in a world of the lower case. That may sound fatuous but under Ger- many’s orthographical rules that is something beyond an ee cummings affectation thing. Wordplay nests here and spot as a title is typi- cal. For German-speakers, it sounds like ‘Spott’ – ridicule. With one ‘t’ it means ‘ad’ and is a gig business borrowing meaning ‘spotlight’. The cover artwork looks like a spotlight on curtains. Multilayeredness is what Attwenger is about.
Binder’s lyrics evoke the gusto and the chip-chop of their countryman poet Ernst Jandl, an admirer of theirs, who appeared at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Albert Hall in June 1965 in the company of
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