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other to go faster, wilder and beyond what anyone had a right to expect. Frank Moon’s oud sounds in concert like a funky bass right from the banks of the Nile adding eastern touches to celto anglo ameri european psy… oh I give up. Find me dancing round the kitchen doing a thoroughly rotten impression of a whirling dervish, happy as can be with a Cheshire cat grin on my mug.
UFQ are impossibly wonderful, their sec- ond live album just proves what smart alecs can do with wild style and ability to reach the centre of your skull. Unplugged, genre shred- ding for happy souls and itchy feet. And now they’ve got Dan Walsh on board!
Evidence that God loves show offs too. Encore, encore, encore!
www.theufq.com Simon Jones.
CHRIS STOUT & FINLAY MACDONALD
The Cauld Wind – Music of the Pipes & Fiddle Chris Stout Music, CSMUSCD002
What a spicy box of delights we’ve been given by Shetland fiddler Chris Stout and Glaswe- gian bagpiper Finlay MacDonald. Performing on just pipes/whistle and fiddle/viola (plus the occasional touch of guitar), this duo have served up a varied and multicultural musical feast. Their instruments take turns leading and supporting, intertwining and combining, in unison and in interesting harmonies. Mix- ing Scottish traditional and contemporary tunes, this album is full of subtle variety.
Border Crossing is a stirring Spanish- sounding tune composed by Jim Sutherland for the pan-European folk-orchestra La Banda Europa: you could imagine this being performed by Radio Tarifa or La Musgana. Land Of Bens And Glens And Heroes is an emotional, heart-on-the-sleeve modern piobaireachd performed on whistle, pipes and viola. Anyone who wants to understand the soul of piobaireachd should start here – it’s like raw blues. Algiers is a composition by Finlay MacDonald, inspired by the time he and Chris Stout spent working with local musicians in Algiers. There’s something of a Breton feel to the tune, and the likes of Bagad Kemper would do well to add it to their repertoire. Chris Stout’s composition Dull & Boring is quite the opposite (!): this rhythmically-complex, fiendishly-fast piece feels more like Bulgaria than Shetland. The Borve Castle pipe/fiddle set (of three great tunes by three great pipers) climaxes with Gordon Duncan’s The Thin Man, an uptempo tune with a piquant Gallego/Asturiana flavour to it.
www.chrisstout.co.uk
Paul Matheson
LAKATOS RÓBÉRT ÉS A RÉV Révület Fono FA 285-2
Fono’s recent releases have seen uniformly excellent packaging around consistent virtu- osity and occasionally unnecessary and con- trived displays of artful new twists on the tra- ditional music of Hungary.
In contrast, there are no glitzy graphics adorning the unassuming new album from Róbért Lakatos. This, though, is probably the very best of the recent Fono output, being arguably the most essential instalment yet of an ambitious ongoing project to subtly map the connections between Hungarian folk music and other historical and contemporary genres.
The album is incisively based in the
ensemble’s homeland of what was once so- called ‘Upper’ Hungary but is now southern Slovakia, a heavily forested area of Tatras foothills, often inaccessible bilingual towns
and occasional ethnic tension. It’s a beautiful region, but rarely remarked upon in any art form. And so this record is a satisfying, impor- tant and occasionally revelatory experience, though in a quest for commonality, other ter- ritories are also evoked in music that knows no borders, borrowing at will from the Balkans and all points east.
The traditional Csárdás És Szapora
Kalotaszegrol properly contrasts the elegant, soulful singing of Éva Korpás with a tradition- al and complex dance narrative of imitation, parade and courtship; the band fully under- stand the need to be both wistfully comfort- ing and toughly individual accompanists, in a dance of increasing abandon.
Lakatos is anxious, though, not to draw too much attention to the lines and barriers between genres and styles and thereby dis- tract from his band’s beautiful playing, led by his own brilliance on the violin. These elegiac songs, all of which are presented here in satis -fyingly extended form, stretch back vitally through the generations, even in Péter Lelkes’s oddly unobtrusive and effective rap on Szúnyog Dal, a near-swing, folk-rock, tra- ditional, hip-hop album closer.
For the most part, though, the album is an unashamedly nostalgic picture. In Sír A Szemem Hull A Könnyem, Eva Korpas sings, unaccompanied at first, into a sad and quiet chamber piece of cimbalom cries and perfectly modulated stillness, a detailed and transport- ing trance of Hungarian folk music in all its old multi-faceted grandeur. Positively tearful.
www.fono.hu John Pheby
RY COODER 1970 – 1987 Rhino 8122796241
Before twanging his way through innumer- able film soundtracks, re-invigorating the careers of venerable Cuban maestros and releasing odd concept albums about politi- cised cats, Ry Cooder spent the 1970s and parts of the ’80s mining roots music from the US and beyond, to create a body of work strik- ing in its individuality, diversity and unflashy musicianship. And here it all is: eleven albums originally released by Warner Brothers, start- ing with his self-titled debut and going through to Get Rhythm from seven teen years later, presented in a box, unadorned, un- mucked about with and, at their best (which is most of the time), unsurpassed.
I’m guessing that describing the music on
offer here is akin to enrolling your grand- mother in a course entitled Egg Sucking for Beginners. You’ll know about the effortless combination of blues, country, US folk, calyp- so, oldtimery, Tex-Mex and other influences. Cooder’s ability to take an obscure old song and simultaneously respect its origins and make it completely his own and the un-showy virtuosity of his guitar playing. You won’t need me to sing the praises of his generally spare and unhurried but deceptively sophisti- cated arrangements or growing confidence as a singer and songwriter.
All of this emerged fully formed with that debut and continued through 1971’s Into the Purple Valley, Boomer’s Story from the following year, Paradise and Lunch (1974), 1976’s Chicken Skin Music, the live Showtime released a year later and 1978’s Jazz (much maligned at the time, not least by Cooder himself, but now ripe for reappraisal). Bop Til You Drop from ’79 was the first digi- tally recorded album and probably the closest Cooder came to a commercial breakthrough. Borderline (1980) saw the end of this classic run. The Slide Area (1982) and 1987’s Get Rhythm have their moments but both lack consistency and are somewhat hampered by heavy-handed arrangements.
There’s not much more than the music here, the original albums are reproduced in their original sleeves, shrunk down to CD size (a magnifying glass may be required). No additional material or extra info. But no mat- ter, those who have yet to discover Cooder can dive in; diehard fans may care to replace their much-played battered old vinyls and at less than £25 for the whole kit and caboodle, you can’t really go wrong.
Jamie Renton. VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Rough Guide To The Best African Music You’ve Never HeardWorld Music Network RGNET1312CD
The Rough Guide To The Best African Music You’ve Never Heard is the latest release to come out of the World Music Network’s pop- ular battle of the bands competition, which aims to bring lesser-known world music acts to wider attention.
True to the compilation’s name, the musical standard here is very high, and most of the tracks are taken from recent releases by up-and-coming African artists. Also includ- ed on the album is some as-yet-unreleased material and a track by the unfortunately obscure 1970s Senegalese band La Sahel. The two most effective tracks on this album, how- ever, are provided by red-hot kora player Noumoucounda Cissoko and Moroccan multi- instrumentalist Simo Lagnawi, giving hints as to the wide range of styles being played in the continent today. Cissoko channels a pure Senegalese funk in Noumou Koradioulou, whereas Lagnawi’s Baniyorkoy tends to the traditional, a beautiful example of the bluesy, esoteric gnawa grooves.
Despite the quality of the tracks includ-
ed, it doesn’t really feel as if the African con- tinent as a whole is particularly well-repre- sented though. It does feature tracks from most areas of the continent, but eight of its fourteen tracks are from Mandé cultures, so at times it can feel a little West African-heavy.
Included as a bonus disc is Junk Funk by Sotho Sounds. This Lesotho band’s light-heart- ed album was included in fRoots’ playlist in November/December 2012, and its playful use of homemade instruments fits well with the vibe of the record it’s packaged with.
In the end, this is a great album to listen to, and a good way to sample the next gener- ation of African stars. If you’re not a huge fan of West African music, though, there may be better releases out there for you.
www.worldmusic.net
Jim Hickson Ry Cooder
Photo: Susan Titelman
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