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There are tracks from local singer- songwriters, teachers, pipers (including the youthful but masterful Amy Low and Emma Buchan), as well as some output from song- writing and fiddle workshops. There are obvi- ously a few more McNeill songs and tunes, including The Travelling Nation’s Pride/Cri- mond sung by the always wonderful Sylvia Barnes. Andrew Howie’s The Carran River caught the ear too.
There’s a highly detailed booklet accom- panying the album, with lyrics, comprehen- sive notes, cast lists and potted biographies. Altogether a wonderful and worthy project for all involved, and there isn’t a filler track anywhere, but – unsurprisingly – the sheer diversity of material and performers make The Falkirk Music Pot an album to dip into, rather than listen to as a unified whole. Well worth the effort, though!
www.greentrax.com Bob Walton
GANGBÉ BRASS BAND Go Slow To Lagos Buda 4734804
‘Gangbé’ means ‘the sound of metal’ in the Fon language and here we go again as the blast-furnace brassmen from Cotonou pro- ceed with their fifth stirring melange of voodoo, juju and big band jazz. The parts are complex, confident, full of good humour and excellently recorded in Benin (mostly): the sound simply bubbles from the speakers. The street-life/traffic jam cover is very reminis- cent of a Fela sleeve – Cotonou isn’t far from Lagos, and the ethnic heritage of both is essentially the same. Yoruba is the word – just like Fela, King Sunny Ade and Emmanuel Adebayor. Bustling, busy, talkative and smart as you like: this is a welcoming and humane orchestra. Also tight!
www.budamusique.com Rick Sanders
CIAC BOUM Volume 4 Le Grand Barbichon
MULTIDELTA
L’Arborescence Des Sources Appel Rekords APR 1360
These are wo albums with interestingly different approaches to French dance music.
Ciac Boum are a multi-instrumentalist trio and all three sing which all helps to add vari- ety., Very little information comes with this slip-sleeve own label job but listening, it soon becomes obvious that this is a central France dance band of considerable power and impact and that the musical interaction between the three of them is very well developed.
They play their rondes, waltzes, bransles, mazurkas et al with great attack, power and aplomb. Listening to the way they assail the bransles Lé Feuilles De Lésare and Suus La Nostra Trilha, one gets the mental image of a group of talented enthusiastic young dancers really going for it. They use some familiar tricks to provide impact and lift in the middle of a set of tunes, a change of key or instru- mentation or a shift from a vocal section to an instrumental one.
I’ll bet that their dances are exhilarating and exhausting fun.
The two musicians of Multidelta have a good pedigree, having worked in Belgium alongside Baltazar Montanaro and Sophie Cavez for some years. Basically they are an accordeonist, Aurélien Claranbaux and a piper, BorisTrouplin and it’s the compositions of the latter that dominate the album.
All the tunes are in folk dance rhythms but the emphasis is different. The tunes seem to be chosen for their careful composition as good listening tunes rather than, as with Ciac Boum, just for being belting good dance tunes. Some of the recording is overlaid with various programming devices and these vary in their effectiveness. Sometimes they seem to be underplayed and effective; at other, fewer times it feels like the intent expressed in the press release that the “machines are here to support diatonic accordeons and bag- pipes” is not happening. They are not; they are taking over.
www.denappel.be Vic Smith
DEBASHISH BHATTACHARYA
Slide Guitar Ragas From Dusk To Dawn Riverboat/World Music Network TUGCD1083
Debashish Bhattacharya, a modified guitar merchant in the making, as with so many Hin- dustani musical discoveries around the turn of the century, arrived thanks to Lyle Wachovsky’s India Archive Music between 1992 and 2000. Wachovsky’s big ears had an uncanny talent for success. If Wachovsky was ever wrong these ears never detected it.
Rachel Jackson’s notes explain, “From the first crack of sunshine at dawn, and from twilight to the start of the new day, every fragile moment of earth’s daily passage is linked to a specific raga.” The thread goes from dusk to dawn, accompanied with the notes’ sprinkle of romanticism. Kirwani comes with the fancifully translated title Ras Tarang (The Waves of Desire).
Any diurnal/nocturnal cycle of ragas must look to the ground zero of Shivkumar Sharma, Brijbushan Kabra and Hariprasad Chaurasia’s benchmark Call of the Valley. Bhattacharya, as a student of Kabra, the musician who transformed the guitar’s for- tune in Hindustani art music, cannot but be aware of that masterwork from the late 1960s. He acquits himself beautifully and the sparser the interpretation the better. Distri- bution via Discovery Records in the UK.
www.discovery-records.com Ken Hunt Debashish Bhattacharya DELE SOSIMI
You No Fit Touch AmWahwah45 WAHCD027
Dele Sosimi may have been born in Hackney but his parents were Nigerian and at the age of four the family returned to Africa. Dele went on to become musical director for Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 and Femi Kuti’s Positive Force. What better schooling? And now he’s back in London and this is his third album. Of course, it’s Afrobeat through and through. Big orchestra, lots of snap and fizz, lots of homage to Kuti. If you like Afrobeat, this is a high quality example of it. If it’s varied enter- tainment you seek, better try elsewhere; the relentlessness of it all is not negotiable.
www.delesosimi.org Rick Sanders
JANSBERG Terra Nova Go’Danish Folk Music GO0415
It’s ten years since fiddler Henrik Jansberg sprang on to the Danish folk scene, and in that decade this is just his third album. A lis- ten to this explains why it’s been such a gap since his last release – he and his band have been thinking long and hard about how they approach music. The first two tunes here showcase just how radical a rethink it’s been: Kometens Hale draws from both English and American folk with a wonderfully big produc- tion, while Jærgen explodes from its opening into folk-techno. Now a five-piece (with the addition of keyboards, which play an under- stated but vital part in the new sounds) the musicians haven’t lost their traditional hearts, but have learned how to make the 21st Cen- tury integral to the way everything works.
Kudos to the production for the suitably massive sound, but also to the players, who’ve obviously given much time to the arrangements. The original material, all by Jansberg himself, reflects the continuity of Danish folk, not so much redefining it as realigning it. The whole thing is a joy, and part of the sense of a new instrumental con- sciousness awakening throughout Europe, where those looking at the past have more in common than they might ever have imagined.
www.jansberg.com Chris Nickson