127 f
CECILIA Pastourelle Appel Rekords APR1380
This is an instrumental CD of bagpipes, hurdy gurdy and accordeon, the third in a series inspired by the life of fictional character Cecilia, and is a tenth birthday celebration. The melodies are inspired by and fit the Euro- pean dance genres and one of the things I like on the cover is that the type of dance form the tune relates to is noted underneath each track title.
I found this, surprisingly, to be a slow burner for me. The instrumentation and genre is something I would normally assume I would have liked instantly but it didn’t all have imme- diate appeal. The opening track De Zwarte Beek is promising and everything is beautifully recorded. The sound of the bagpipes is particu- larly lush but I found the balance between the instruments was dominated by the pipes on this track and on a couple of others.
Having said that this is a slow burner, that is not necessarily a bad thing. They are often the ones that stay with you longest and after listening at least ten times I have found that this album has really grown on me. You get used to the ebb and flow of the rhythms, which I didn’t like originally – I like a constant rhythm for dancing – and you start humming the tunes. Whilst I find this a mixed bag it was well worth persevering.
The artwork is beautiful, but the track listing on the back is difficult to read even with reading glasses on.
Jo Freya BARNSTORMER 1649
Restoration Tragedy Roundhead Records HELMETCD9
Feisty it’s a cracking word isn’t it? However, is it a word you’d normally hang on early music? I’m betting not. Courtly, civil, genteel, maybe. But feisty is exactly the word needed to describe Barnstormer’s welding together of seventeenth-century tunes and punk. Logi- cally it shouldn’t work, but then Attila The Stockbroker – the brains behind all this – has Barnstormed through several incarnations and thrives on both the unexpected and the radical. This time he’s hit the nail bang on and the results are rather exhilarating. Of course his subtext always carries a message and here that’s the background to the world turned upside down, when the English sliced off the head of the king, declaring a republic as drastic ideals swept the land. Drawing par- allels between 1649 and 2018 is smart as we’re once more surrounded by hysterical individuals who sprawl degrees of caprice across the media.
Barnstormer meanwhile get heads down and open with classic music of the oppressed, The Diggers’ Song and The World Turned Upside Down, all done on the back of grind- ing riffs, thudding drums and bubbling elastic bass runs. Attila’s voice is rough-hewn and the music powerfully ragged, which suits the back-to-basics philosophy of the subject. However, don’t be fooled, as much as these guys have muscle and gristle, when need aris- es they can play time-tossed instruments with delicacy – it’s just delicacy with attitude. Crumhorns, shawms, recorders, mandocellos and viols are all pressed into service at various points across the album, both as period leads over the rumbling new wave or as a counter- point between the heavier tracks when a qui- eter interlude adds calm to the genuine chaos of the time. Burford Requiem is an especially touching paeon to Levellers gunned down by
Cecilia
Cromwell’s soldiers. Of the parallels drawn between then/now, The Man With The Beard, which finds hope in the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn, and Robina, the Stockbroker’s hymn to his wife, are both strong, positive tracks. Restoration Tragedy isn’t perfect but it’s a breeze of a ride, and they’re to be heartily cheered for the attempt. Those of you who recall the criminally underrated Dr. Cosgill will find links here; for everyone else, it’s like the man alludes to – there really isn’t a lot else similar around. That’ll be feisty then. Out on CD and double vinyl.
atillathetsockbroker.com Simon Jones VARIOUS ARTISTS
JÚLIA KUBINYI, BALÁZS SZOKOLAY DONGÓ &
FERENC ZIMBER Rustico Fonó FA415-2
In a snapshot of lost Carpathian time, a wide variety of sighing Hungarian wind instru- ments, delicately sparse cimbalom, drones and poised arrangements of stillness create a melodious ritual around the pure, warm tones of Júlia Kubinyi. In recomposing and reforming the music of the Székely land, Mol- davia, Mezöség, Nyitra and Somogy, the impression is nevertheless created of a single, unchanging rural locale, a falsehood of sounds so beautiful that one is desperate to believe it. The trio play a whole world in frag- ile, pastoral miniature.
Júlia Kubinyi has been surrounded by this music for her entire life. But she has never attempted to impersonate or to pay homage to any of her illustrious predecessors or contemporaries, ensuring that each of her releases is fresh, intriguing and original. Her debut solo album was one of my albums of the year in 2015, and I have become happily lost within its numinous, intimate phrasing ever since. A few years on, however, and what was once naivety masking an inner stee- liness is now a confident and knowing story- telling prowess.
There is an articulate simplicity and smouldering melancholy arising from the trio’s intense search for a “demanding form” based on their own musical instincts rather than any familiar style. This makes for a listen that is one step removed from previous explorations of the same milieu, a develop-
Barrelhouse Blues Rough Guides / World Music Network RGNET1374CD
The term ‘Barrelhouse’ refers to the piano style developed by the musicians who had the hard job of entertaining customers in the makeshift joints hastily erected to cater for hard-drinking labourers who would often appear adjacent to all sorts of work camps. To survive as a musician in these dives you’d have to be a pretty tough character, and lucky: not everyone made it. Clarence ‘Pine- top’ Smith (whose classic Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie is included in this set) was killed, age 24, by a stray bullet in a Chicago dance hall in 1929. Tough men making tough music – and Barrelhouse Blues contains many prime examples of this two-fisted, break ’em on down, knock ‘em out music.
Speckled Red with his outlandish The
Dirty Dozen, Cripple Clarence Lofton’s rollick- ing Strut That Thing, Walter Roland’s bouncy What You Gonna Do, Cow Cow Davenport’s seminal Cow Cow Blues, and Mead Lux Lewis’s outstanding Honky Tonk Train Blues all display the eruptive energy and propulsive drive that this music was capable of unleash- ing. But the selection of tracks balances the heavy hitters with some more ‘sedate’ items that include Jimmy Yancey (always the most delicate of pianists) playing Slow And Easy Blues, Bert Mays’ vaudeville-ish You Can’t Come In, and bluesman Skip James’ haunting If You Haven’t Any Hay Get On The Down The Road. Twenty-five tracks, recorded between 1926 and 1941, all previously available on other releases but gathered here in glorious assembly.
worldmusic.net Dave Peabody
ment of Hungarian folk music that is both affectionate where it might have been aus- tere and gently experimental where it might have been slavishly authentic.
Dongó contributes flute and kaval played in styles gleaned from wide-ranging folkloric studies. Together with Zimber’s romantic sustains, simple glissandos and gen- tle cascades upon the cimbalom, a real and revelatory sense of narrative is allowed to emerge around Kubinyi’s beseeching voice.
fono.hu John Pheby
Photo: Jan Rietman
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
