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The idea of From Here (ask a bunch of folk singers and musicians to perform some- thing personally meaningful from their reper - toire) is very simple, but the results are startling effective.
Stew Simpson (Hadrian’s Union) belts out
Ed Pickford’s A Cud Hew in an a cappella style best described as ‘bloody exciting’, while Bella Hardy, accompanied solely by her own sparse fiddle, is utterly captivating. The sto- ries behind the artists’ selections are fascinat- ing and revealing. Jack Sharp (Wolf People) confesses that he “used to hate country danc- ing and all that”, but subsequently discov- ered his local song Bedfordshire May Carol after hearing it on a Shirley Collins record. Fran Foote learned The Irish Girl from the singing of her mother while Jon Boden and Sam Lee both recall youthful encounters with traditional song at Forest School Camps. Nico- la Kearey learned Georgie from Martin Carthy (who himself sings The Bed-Making). Eliza Carthy and Lisa Knapp both deliver strong, distinctive performances, as does Men Diamler, on an unaccompanied reading of his own 1848 (Sunset Beauregard). Instrumentals come from Spiro, Sam Sweeney and Rob Har- bron – who plays a lovely pair of morris tunes.
Recorded by Ian Carter with artwork by Nicola Kearey and supported using public funding by Arts Council England, From Here succeeds both as a brilliant compilation of top-notch performers and perhaps to prompt a timely appraisal of the state of the folk nation.
stickinthewheel.com Steve Hunt VARIOUS ARTISTS
Terraforming in Analogue Space – IRL Remixes 2000-2015 IRL B01N7CGRLJ
There’s no word more likely to send the Folk Police into a collective canipulation than ‘remix’. But I know that you’re fRoots readers and therefore so much more intelligent and open-minded than that and I’m sure you’ll be more than ready to give a
good listen to this collection culled from the catalogue of the IRL label. Particularly as it involves lots of people who’ve been featured in this magazine, here providing either the raw material of the original track or the stu- dio jiggery-pokery that results in the remix (and in some cases both at various times).
Tinariwen, Justin Adams, Lo’Jo, Malawi Mouse Boys, Dub Colossus and Transglobal Underground all crop up and, with fifteen years and 99 previous releases of the label’s rootsy but forward-thinking output to draw on, there’s rarely a dull moment. Transglob- al’s take on Tinariwen’s Oualahila opens pro- ceedings in fine style. Other highlights include the rockin’ bouncy Radar Station mix of Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara’s Nga- men, The Dhol Foundation remixing Malawi Mouse Boys (who’d have thought the latter’s cheery traditionalism would mix so well with the former’s UK Asian electro-beats?) and South Sudan’s Acholi Machon getting a refit from Penguin Café Orchestra no less.
And if all that new-fangled remixing still seems a too much for your delicate sensibili- ties, there’s a whole other disc included with the un-mucked-about-with originals. So you could view this as a very good compilation with an added free bonus remix CD, which you just might get round to giving a listen to and just might find you like a lot more than you expected if you do.
terraformingmusic.com/ Jamie Renton
PAULIINA SYRJÄLÄ Lunkula Kansanmusiikki Instituutin KICD129
The second album from Finnish kantele player Syrjälä is actually part of the work for her doctorate at the Sibelius Academy. But it’s far more than any academic exercise: it’s a meditation on the island of Lunkula, the home of the ancestors, and
an exploration of the possibilities of her 19th Century Jooseppi Pohjola instrument, playing – at least in a fashion – in the traditional way with a wooden stick (as well as paintbrush, fingerpicks, a knitting needle, and a crochet hook). Those are the basics, and while many of the ideas are rooted in history, Syrjälä’s imagination certainly isn’t mired in the past. She builds soft, glittering, circular sound- scapes that owe something to minimalist, ambient music. Yet there’s plenty of improvi- sation in these pieces that allows them to scatter gorgeous trails of music, sometimes with another melody from the bass strings offering a grounding to it all. Recorded with- out overdubs, it a gentle journey, but a thrilling one, too. Syrjälä is a skilled musician, but also a keenly intuitive one, and the impressions of the island here are like walks over the landscape, opening up sights along the way. Beautiful, definitely, adventurous, and somehow ineffably Finnish. It’s music that captures fleeting moments.
www.pauliinasyrjala.com Chris Nickson
DIPPER MALKIN Tricks Of The Trade Dipper Malkin DM001
John Dipper is one of Britain’s most sophisticated fiddlers. The lyrical richness of the melodies, textures and accompaniments he draws from his viola d’amore and his seemingly endless fund of strong compositions and cre- ative expansion of mostly
English traditional tunes, drawn from a deep knowledge of 17th and 18th Century collec- tions such as those of Playford and Walsh, as well as living tradition, are always a delight.
That’s if ‘fiddler’ is the right word. He plays a long-headed fourteen-string viola
Dave Malkin and John Dipper
d’amore, tuned in his own way which bor- rows ideas from Sweden’s keyed moraharpa, so that the top strings sound like a normal violin, while the melody can descend to the lower ones that also provide dark harmonies and drones. Just listen to the way he accom- panies Dave Malkin’s song King Storm (based on a broadside in the Kidson collection), developing the instrumental sections into a lovely, winding exploration and extension of the tune Daniel Cowper from Playford.
Dave Malkin makes a fine foil in his gui- tar parts to the instrumentals and in his three songs which he sings in a relaxed, natural way reminiscent of Chris Wood. King Storm, his rewrite of The Parting Glass in the hope that it might replace Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve (it deserves at least to stand along- side it), and a setting of the version of All Things Are Quite Silent collected by Vaughan Williams from Ted Baines of Lower Beeding, in which Dipper’s viola d’amore multitracks a gorgeous arrangement fit to delight RVW.
At first glance the latter two titles might cause the track-list reader to think “Oh, I know those, nothing new here”, but that would be a big mistake. In the songs and instrumentals, both traditional and new, the duo casts a lot of new light and creativity on the material. The new compositions, mostly by John, meld with the traditional seamlessly; melodic, never clever to impress, but always actually very clever.
It’s just the two of them, except for touches of percussion by Corrie Dick on a cou- ple of tracks and Tom Dennis’s beautiful counterpointing and improvising flugelhorn in Daniel Cowper.
www.dippermalkin.bigcartel.com Andrew Cronshaw
BABA ZULA XX Glitterbeat GBCD042
Istanbul’s Baba Zulu have a most singular sound, inspired by the Turkish psych-folk- rock movement of the 1960s and ’70s and the traditional Anatolian music which was an inspiration to that scene, but also drawing on jazz, art- rock experimentation and a
heavy dose of dub and reggae. They’re cele- brating their 20th anniversary with this sort- of ‘Best Of’ which draws on material from all
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