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RANT Rant Make Believe Records, MBR4CD
Rant are four of Scotland’s finest fiddle play- ers, all well-known as soloists: two from the Shetland Islands (sisters Bethany and Jenna Reid), one from Inverness (Sarah-Jane Sum- mers) and one from the Black Isle (Lauren MacColl). As a fiddle quartet, they create an elegant chamber-folk sound of vibrant rich- ness and evocative, austere beauty. The album contains traditional tunes from the Scottish Highlands and Shetland and from 18th Century Scottish baroque fiddler Niel Gow. It also contains some fine compositions from Lauren MacColl and Jenna Reid and oth- ers. On the gatefold packaging of the CD there are beautiful interior and exterior pho- tographs of the 16th Century East Church of Cromarty, Black Isle, where this album was so atmospherically recorded.
This is pure fiddle music, with no other accompaniment. Because of the inventive creativity of the four fiddlers, no additional instruments are needed. The arrangements are thoughtful and highly-crafted, from the delicate pizzicato opening of the sweet Cape Breton tune Jordan Taylor’s, to the majestic rendition of Niel Gow’s Miss Ferguson Of Raith, all four fiddles in unison at first, before diverting into different interlacing melodies. The Tuning Prelude bagpipe-tune set has the supporting fiddles creating phrases to evoke the base drone and sympathetic drones of the pipes. For the Gaelic song melody Tha m’fhearann Saidhbhir, the fiddles recreate the call-and-response tradition of Gaelic song with one emulating the lead vocal and the other three replying. There’s a splendid arrangement of Karen Tweed’s Back Home At Onsbacken – the joyous, soaring arpeggio accompaniment is like something from an Aaron Copland ballet.
This fine album will appeal to those who appreciate Scottish traditional music per- formed with classical finesse and with an occasional Nordic touch. This is dignified, deep and profound music, intricately arranged and consummately played.
www.rantfiddles.com Paul Matheson
MULATU ASTATKE Sketches Of Ethiopia Jazz Village JV570015
This is a big-scale work of Ethiopian jazz from one of its founding fathers on keyboards and congas and his deft, funky band of English and Ethiopian players. Ethio-jazz is a flag of convenience but actually this music incorpo- rates a great breadth of ingredients – from traditional Ethiopia to cool jazz of the ‘50s, to the classical tradition and modern grooves, almost Sly Stone. The result is coherent, acces- sible and rewarding.
Starts moody and witty, clattering hand drums and brass, like music from a noir TV series of the ‘50s, which is the perfect use for staccato and lurching Ethiopian rhythms – and surprisingly, a warm haven for ethnic instru- ments like the krar lyre and washint fiddle, which add an archaic down-home strangeness to the otherwise standard jazz instrumenta- tion. And the album starts to open out.
All credit to the Steps Ahead band, who show great versatility and finesse. They are the real thing – playing with style and guts, whether on sweeping soundscapes, or riding on nagging riffs that provide plenty of bounce for individual excursions, principally but not exclusively by Astatke himself. All play with freedom and invention, and a sense of joy – it’s a big generous production, with lots of play in it. There’s also room for a sad- ness alongside the boppy, a whole wide range of feeling and effect. Drama reaches a
Rant
peak on Gumuz, a powerful vocal declama- tion by the guesting Tesfaye over a cascading chord sequence. This is music to carve its way into your heart. Miles Davis and Gil Evans sketched Spain. Mulatu Astatke portrays his own country. Some artist.
www.jazzvillagemusic.com Rick Sanders
VARIOUS ARTISTS The Full English Topic TSCD823
“Unlocking hidden treasures of England’s cul- tural heritage,” reads the sub-title of The Full English, the amazing new digital archive of traditional songs, dances and customs newly set up by the EFDSS. It’s a brilliant resource that’s been superbly executed and a fine idea, too, to commission Fay Hield to mould from it a selection of new music with a group of prominent artists bringing it to life in album and touring form.
She’s made a decent fist of it, too, delv- ing deep to avoid anything obvious, collating material from a commendably broad source of the archive (and one song, Linden Lea, not in it at all), incorporating broadsides, sea songs, dance tunes and music hall and even one original song written for the occasion. The cast list is also impressive, involving Seth Lakeman, Martin Simpson, Nancy Kerr, Rob Harbron, Ben Nicholls and Sam Sweeney alongside Hield. They combine and har- monise gloriously on the unaccompanied opening track Awake Awake, but the inevitable consequence of so many distinc- tively disparate voices is that as soon as they split off into fronting their own tracks their own styles come to the fore and the whole thing begins to appear less of a unified pro- ject and more a superior compilation album.
It may be an unfair comparison, but as ensemble experiments go, it compares unfavourably with the Cecil Sharp Project of a couple of years ago, and this would certainly have benefited from being recorded post- tour when they’d had a chance to work up the material and present it with more confi- dence and unity… though wasting selling potential on the road obviously would have made no commercial sense.
That’s not to be dismissive, for there is much to be applauded here. That one origi- nal song – Nancy Kerr’s Fol The Day-O –fits perfectly into the concept with a sprightly arrangement and a warming lyric in homage to the great Lincolnshire singer Joseph Taylor. In addition, it sets up the album’s most inspired moment as Percy Grainger’s wax cylinder recording of Taylor singing Brigg Fair in 1905 makes its almost ghostly presence felt while triggering a wonderfully evocative
Martin Simpson instrumental variation on the same theme. The enticing sense of theme is further underlined by Simpson’s characteristi- cally impassioned delivery of another Taylor favourite Creeping Jane.
Other outstanding moments include the touchingly pure Portrait Of My Wife delivered with a typical overload of energy and enthusiasm by Seth Lakeman over a beauteous string arrangement; the irre- pressibly bouncy pace and story of Arthur O’Bradley; the dainty music hall-style chorus of Man In The Moon; and the rigorous set- ting of Rounding The Horn around Har- bron’s concertina, with some much needed fire in the belly supplied by Ben Nicholls’ rough diamond vocal.
It’s a good album with the potential to be a great one…and I’d wager that if they’d made it after touring, it would have been.
www.efdss.org/efdss-the-full-english www.fayhield.com/the-full-english/
Colin Irwin LAURA SMITH
Everything Is Moving Borealis Records BCD224
TONY McMANUS
Mysterious Boundaries Greentrax CDTRAX376
Another fRoots CD review pile, another name unknown to me… firing up the player with- out really looking, when Laura Smith started singing on the opening Lonely Waterloo it had a similar effect as on the first time ever I heard Stan Rogers sing: everything came to a dead stop while the small hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. A few seconds later as the brain restarted I wondered why on earth I’d never heard of this singer before. A voice so different from the high pitched wifty- wafty little-girl singing that seems almost mandatory these days, a warm but serious lived-in contralto full of strength, experience and emotion that wraps itself round you and urges you to listen more closely.
Laura’s a Canadian singer and songwriter who was apparently making waves before a number of debilitating setbacks and a long and complicated recovery put things largely on hold. Everything Is Moving is her first album in sixteen years, and is absolutely stun- ning from start to finish (and yes I know that word’s often overused). Mixing Celtic tradi- tional songs and those from contemporary songwriters, all the tracks are compelling, but her own I Built A Boat (a reflection on recon- structing her life), the flugelhorn accompa- nied The Blues And I and the traditional Gar-
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