f106 MOUSSU T E LEI
JOVENTS Operette Volume 2 Manivette MR17
I love this album. Not culturally French but specifically Marseillais, this is a second volume featuring their own take on 1930s Musichall (Operette) songs from this city. The original style of the songs reflected “music brought by ships docking in the port” and was “A fusion of Provençal traditional songs, Italian popular tunes, bel canto and Afro-American music” and the American jazz of the 1930s. The band love those music references as they reflect their own interests in world music as are apparent in their own interpretation and delivery.
Like folk songs, these are about news of the time, life, love and cultural identity, mak- ing them immediately accessible and as rele- vant now as they were then. It has such a feel-good factor that every time I listen to it I smile. If I said it is predominantly banjo-led some of you might run screaming from the room but don’t – you’d be missing some- thing. It works beautifully here along with the sousaphone and the rest of this tight but relaxed ensemble.
Gaye Su Akyol GAYE SU AKYOL
Istikrarli Hayal Hakikattir Glitterbeat GBCD062
I first heard Gaye Su Akyol at an Istanbul gig a few years ago when word was just getting out, around the time of the release of her first album. I was struck by the onstage char- acter – a sort of Turkish Pete Doherty with raki the poison of choice rather than smack, and a persona which owes something to Mata Hari. The music has remained a nostal- gic mélange of ’60s/’70s Anatolian pop-rock from the golden era of Haramiler, Baris Manco and Mogollar (who all drew heavily on ’50s surf pop à la The Ventures). Aside – a good place to start finding out about this scene is the compilation Hava Narghile: Turk- ish Rock Music 1966-1975 – a scene for which Baba Zula have been long carrying the torch in their own unique way.
Istikrarli Hayal Hakikattir (Consistent Fantasy Is A Reality) is Akyol’s third album. Live, the band are capable of rocking out vol- canically; on record, the volcano is more sub- dued, vocals to the fore, lots of melodic gui- tar twang and vocal reverb, discrete trip- hoppy electronics, and sung-in-Turkish, pas- tel-hued, floaty lyrics, with an overall feel of rocky languor – pleasantly, degenerately appealing. The album booklet includes the Turkish with English translations.
The music is set in – and doesn't tran- scend – its style, but nevertheless has plenty of charm. The plus of mannered vocals (didn't do David Bowie any harm…) is distinctiveness, the minus is the feeling that it’s all an act. And of course that’s a good definition of pop – it’s an act, it’s ironic, it’s an aural fantasy. And that makes the album title come to life conceptu- ally: Turkey, like many a place these days, is the Titanic half an hour before striking the iceberg. Here, we’re all living in a (monstrous) fantasy and we get on with our lives as best we can, and when evening comes we might find solace in narghile, wine, and romance.
There’s talk of a renaissance in Turkish
music. I think it’s skin deep; people are too wound up to wind down, and many have upped sticks. Anyway, in the meantime we have Akyol as our soundtrack, one in which the fantasized past seems reborn as hope. Or as the last line of Akyol’s self-penned, eloquent, mili-
tant, feminist press release has it: “Dreams keep you awake and it is time to wake up!”
You can hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 71 compilation.
glitterbeat.com Nick Hobbs
JOHN SMITH Hummingbird Commoner COMM01CD
Two years after recording Headlong in Sam Lakeman’s Somerset studio, John Smith returned to lay down anoth- er new album. Unlike the former, however, which was built around Smith’s song- writing, Hummingbird is very much about celebrating tra-
ditional songs and paying tribute to the artists like John Renbourn, John Martyn and Bert Jansch who inspired Smith in the first place. Six of the album’s ten tracks are tradi- tional songs, with one cover version and three original numbers.
“Less is more” was the motto that Smith and Lakeman adopted while making the album. “A folk song’s clarity of purpose is exactly the reason why it has been played in pubs, living rooms and concert halls for hun- dreds of years,” says Smith. Indeed, this approach has absolutely paid off. Shorn of the typical embellishments we might have come to expect on a modern-day folk album, there is beauty and simplicity in the delivery that gives the lyrics in songs like Hares On The Mountain and Lord Franklin a real resonance.
The lone cover is Anne Briggs’ The Time
Has Come which Smith first heard, like many readers will have done, on a Bert Jansch and John Renbourn album. Smith’s three original songs, like the beautiful title track, stand sympathetically alongside the much older material.
A gifted guitarist, a unique vocalist and an impassioned interpreter of traditional material, if John Smith has made this album for his musical heroes then he’s done them proud. Hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 71 compilation.
johnsmithjohnsmith.com Darren Johnson
You don’t need to be a French speaker or understand dialect and accent to enjoy this. The songs are infinitely hummable. I can’t pick out a track as I like them all...
The packaging deserves a mention. The CD is made to look like a mini vinyl record, which is delightful, and the drawings and fonts in the artwork evoke the time, style and life that this music reflects.
Hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 71 compilation.
moussuteleijovents.com Jo Freya
TAUTUMEITAS Tautumeitas CPL Music CPL025
The Baltic explosion continues. The six women of Tautumeitas first appeared with drum and bagpipe group Auli and now they’re back on their own. Six voices, violin, accordeon, plus some excellent music arrangements with synth, double bass, and even a subtle brass section, that make the most of their singing and the traditional Lat- vian songs. It’s a sound that can move from the intimate to the grandly epic (Barainite), powered along by percussion. The produc- tion gives a very big feel to the music, creat- ing something huge out of what are relative- ly simple pieces. The trick is in how they’re put together, the tapestry that the voices weave and the variety in the arrangements. The result superbly manages a difficult high- wire act; defiantly, aggressively modern, while retaining the innate delicacy and raw- ness of the old folk songs.
A great deal of thought has gone into all this, yet it never feels intellectual or cold. The passion these women have for the music does build on what’s gone before and uses it as a foundation. But on top of that they’ve built something new, something that’s right for the 21st century. Plenty of artists are doing that, but they – and several other Baltic artists – seem to grasp what it really means. The music here is absolutely Latvian, even in such a shiny and large presentation. They haven’t lost sight of who they are and their origins. In fact, they’ve used them wisely to build the framework for what is a gloriously addictive album.
tautumeitas.lv Chris Nickson
Photo: © Judith Burrows
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