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tan Mother’s Lullaby are all pretty well show- stoppers in anybody’s book, I reckon.
A first class bunch of musicians (using gui- tars, fiddles, piano, cello, bass), unobtrusive but sympathetic arrangements and a careful production job (shared with Paul Mills – Stan Rogers’ producer) all serve to make you listen again and again. An absolutely triumphant return, even if I personally never knew she’d been away… album of the year for me, so far. I’m off to scour the interweb thingy to see if her early albums are still available.
www.laurasmith.ca
Canadian resident Tony McManus is widely regarded as one of the best guitarists around when it comes to (loosely speaking) Celtic music, and a sympathetic accompanist (who incidentally makes several appearances on Laura Smith’s album). Much in demand worldwide (including playing with Carlos Santana and – whisper it quietly in these parts – Loreena McKennitt), his own record- ings don’t come round that often.
All of which makes his latest offering somewhat of a surprise: challenged to learn a classical piece on guitar, he’s conjured up a whole album of classical guitar music. And yes, there are hundreds of world-class classical gui- tarists and albums, so what makes this special?
Firstly the actual sound is just gorgeous: playing these pieces on a resonant steel- strung guitar as opposed the more normal nylon-strung classical guitar of itself makes for a wonderful listening experience. Second- ly, you know how often classically-trained violin players never quite ‘get’ the feel for traditional fiddle music? Well, I think the reverse is going on here. Overcoming the lack/straightjacket of any formal classical training or indoctrination, 20 years’ experi- ence of performing folk and traditional music means the pieces end up being played in a subtly different way to a conventional classi- cal guitarist, bringing vitality and freshness, some soul even, to the music that just leaps from the speakers.
Drawing material from Bach, Montever- di and the like, Satie’s Gnossienne #1 is a hyp- notic revelation, and you could play a lot of the tracks on this album to a folk audience without telling them it was ‘classical’ music and they’d probably love it and be none the wiser. And the opening/title track (Couperin’s Les Barricades Mystérieuses, beautifully reprised at the end on a sonorous baritone guitar) reminds us that the boundaries between different types of music aren’t always as obvious or as strong as one might think. In its own way this album is also a tri- umphant overcoming of hurdles (albeit self- inflicted), and is – as one has come to expect from McManus – a complete delight from start to finish. That’s two ‘albums of the year’ in one hit – does it get any better?
www.tonymcmanus.com Bob Walton
DIRTMUSIC Troubles Glitterbeat GBCD005
Some bands have problems with a difficult sec- ond album. Not Dirtmusic. They went to play Festival in the Desert in Mali and hooked up with the folk in Tamikrest. It transformed their sound. Now, on their third disc, a slimmed- down Dirtmusic with just two original mem- bers, brings most of Ben Zabo’s band into the fold to become a true fusion of East and West.
Most of the songs might come from the pens of Chris Eckman and Hugo Race, but the imagination, arrangements and execution cross continents. There are traces of dub here and there, and the title track is a vintage piece by Jamaican performer and producer Keith Hudson – this version finds its bluesy roots. The music is beautifully grounded and
rhythmic, most notably on the opening cuts, Chicken Scratch and the epic Fitzcarraldo, both of which offer faints nods in the direc- tion of Talking Heads, a band actually far ahead of its time rather than simply expon- dents of post-punk artistry and effect, as the music here illustrates.
What truly sets this album apart is the democratic approach to the music. Neither the Western nor the African element is more important. Each instrument’s voice and idea is a vital part of the whole. That puts Dirtmusic on a whole new track, one that’s not the glob- al fusion of yore but something meatier – planet rock, if you will. Everyone who has an ear or an eye to the future should listen to this because this might well be how things move in the years to come as musicians from differ- ent cultures work together more and more.
Recorded in Bamako under pressure, with the Islamists heading down out of northern Mali, it’s a searing, powerful disc, and it might just be one of the very best released this years, where the passion sim- mers and often burns.
http://label.glitterhouse.co Chris Nickson
PEKKO KÄPPI Rammat Jumalat Helmi Levyt HELMI 064
Finland’s wild man of the jouhikko (bowed lyre), its rasping abrasion and plucking heavily processed, multiplied and fuzzed in insistent, dark swamp-blues grooves; his gnomic, Incredible-String-Band-paralleling vocals lead- ing a massed chorus in a steamy, punky exten- sion of the runo-song tradition. A grower.
I wrote that while attempting to shoe- horn the review into ‘And The Rest’. But even as I was writing the album grew and jumped into focus, and it deserves a review standing alone and proud.
Pekko Käppi is one of the most intense and innovative of Finland’s small band of jouhikko players, in the revival largely begun by maker and player Rauno Nieminen (with whom Käppi also plays in Jouhiorkesteri). He’s deeply into traditional song and explor- ing the husky, impure tones of the instru- ment’s rough-hewn curved-stick horsehair bow driven against three or four horsehair strings (the latter now being replaced for strength and tuneability by more modern substitutes), and has been developing along a very individual path that will undoubtedly lead even further into the dark forest.
Pekko Käppi What he’s doing here, now, on Rammat
Jumalat (Lame Gods) suddenly clicked for me at track three, Käärmetyttö (Snake-Girl): the natural affinity of the spirits of raw, moaning blues (think Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was The Night), Finnish runo-song (the tradition- al, limited-scale songs some of which Elias Lönnrot combined to make Finland’s national epic, Kalevala), and the almost preaching- gospel or tribal chant feel of the voices that surround his.
As a taster, Käärmetyttö can be heard at
www.soundcloud.com/helmi-levyt.
helmilevyt@gmail.com
Andrew Cronshaw
AFRICANDO Viva Africando Stern’s STCD 1120
The group has been going now for 20 years, Ibrahima Sylla’s inspired idea still bearing fruit – to turn back the clock and recreate the Latin sound that beamed out of the Caribbean and inspired so much of modern African music. In Africando great Africans and Latins come together, singers from Guinea, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Benin, Senegal, and – by parentage – from Cape Verde. The arranger and musical director Boncana Maiga comes from Mali. The Latin contingent, flown to Paris from New York, are led by pianist Oscar Hernandez. The result, as ever, is peer- less. The sound is clear and uncluttered. There are no false histrionics – you can sense this is true devotion at work. Just listen to the vocals from ex-Grand Maquisard Lokombe Nkalulu on Maria M’Boko. The only problem indeed might be too much reverence – every now and then you wish somebody might throw a match into the firework box. Empha- sising the album’s essentially conservative nature there is a rather odd medley of San- tana hits – polite, strict-tempo versions of Oye Como Va and Peter Green’s Black Magic Woman. But this isn’t meant to be music to rip up the dancefloor: it’s smooth, sophisticat- ed and very smart.
www.sternsmusic.com Rick Sanders
RÉVEILLONS! A La Chasse Pour Chasser Scorbut SCOR-12
GENTICORUM
Enregistré Live Les Productions Du Moulin PDM 03
One of the most impressive releases to come from the vibrant Québécois traditional music scene in recent years was the double CD from Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps; five female voic- es accompanied by a single male. That man is a percussionist, the energetic Hagrid-looka- like, Jean-François Berthiaume. He appears here with his brother David and two others in his regular outfit Réveillons.
The characteristic sounds of the Quebec tradition are the insistent foot-tapping and driving reels on the single row melodeon. Well, there is plenty of foot – and other – per- cussion here but the featured reed instru- ment is David’s English concertina and that in itself gives this band a sound that is away from the local norm; then there is sort of shuffle rhythm on some tracks that adds to the variety of the mix.
In the main the songs are traditional, some sourced within the Berthiaume family, and the tunes, in the traditional style, are the compositions of the fiddler Richard Forest.
It is certain that the best way to see Réveillons is live for there you would be able to see the spectacular dancing of Jean- François and enjoy his animated dance-calling,
Photo: Iina Esko
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