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STEVE TILSTON Distant Days Riverboat TUGCD1117
Just as Richard Thompson went down the acoustic retrospective route a few years ago with the very well-received Acoustic Classics, Steve Tilston follows with this excellent nine- teen-track album which reworks songs from across his almost five-decade career. À la Thompson, it’s just Tilston, his guitar, his voice and his songs. There’s a beautifully laid-back vibe to the whole affair which really gets you focusing on the songs and appreciating just what a finely talented songwriter Tilston is.
Highlights include the autobiographi-
cal On The Road When I Was Young, which originally appeared on his 2008 album Zig- gurat; I Really Wanted You, from his first album in 1971, An Acoustic Confusion; and his most covered song The Slip Jigs And Reels, originally released in 1992. There is also some deft guitar work on the previous- ly unreleased instrumental Shinjuku, dedi- cated to Bert Jansch.
It’s efficiently packaged rather than lav- ishly so, with all nineteen tracks squeezed on to a single disc. However, detailed liner notes from Tilston himself give a track-by-track run- down on the inspiration behind each song as well as details on where they first appeared.
Much admired as an artist, much covered
as a songwriter, Distant Days is a timely cele- bration of the gentle force of nature that is Steve Tilston. With some lovely guitar, poignant lyrics and gorgeous melodies, Dis- tant Days is turning out to be one of my favourite releases of the summer. Highly rec- ommended.
worldmusic.net Darren Johnson
Steve Tilston at Cambridge Folk Festival 1972
GILMORE & ROBERTS A Problem Of Our Kind GR! GRR008
Katriona and Jamie’s fifth studio album pre- sents us with a series of character studies – the opening pair are real-life figures from the pages of history (and fortunately Kat and Jamie have a real gift for storytelling), the rest character types. For in the album’s title, “our kind” refers to humankind; thus most of its songs deal with different aspects of being human – and whether these be negative or positive, Kat and Jamie display evident sym- pathy for their subject, even on Jamie’s point- ed commentaries on the daily commute (On The Line and Average Joe) or Kat’s hand- clapped a cappella gospel-style Bone Cup- board. There’s abundant affection, too, on Kat’s Things I Left Behind and her ode to her fiddle Just A Piece Of Wood.
The duo’s confident, accomplished and stylish delivery ensures accessibility of idiom and sometimes through adopting the famil- iar device of a catchy traditional folk-style refrain ensures an easy familiarity and memo- rability. Their own instrumental prowess is often dynamically yet sensitively augmented by Matt Downer (bass) and Fred Claridge (drums), while there’s occasional embellish- ment from Sarah Smout, Matt Crum and co- producer Ben Savage, but for much of the time the sound is stripped back to signature nifty guitar with either fiddle, viola or man- dolin. The whole collection’s rounded off with an attractive instrumental, the trad- credited From Night ’Til Morn.
A Problem Of Our Kind poses no prob- lem whatsoever for the listener!
gilmoreroberts.co.uk David Kidman
LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III Years In The Making Storysound
Bit of a weird one this. It sounds like Loudon has been clearing out the closet and found a bunch of odds and ends he’s decided to bung together to make a few bob. “Orphaned album cuts, live recordings, radio appear- ances, home demos and more” is how he describes the motley collection that occupies two CDs drawn from virtually the entire length of his long career.
There are curiosities a-plenty. Richard
Thompson’s Down Where The Drunkards Roll, an unaccompanied Roisin The Bow, an enthusiastic Stewball, a deliciously silly Kar- dashian-style spoof Meet The Wainwrights and even a clip of a Liza Minnelli interview. Not sure of its artistic value, but it’s great fun.
storysoundrecords.com Colin Irwin
ALI FUAT AYDIN & CENK GÜRAY
Öte (For The Memory Of Tanburi Cemil Bey) Felmay FY8242
Tanburi Cemil Bey (the ‘Bey’ just means ‘Mis- ter’ – in Ottoman times people didn’t have surnames) was a renowned musician and composer, living during the late Ottoman period, who died in Istanbul in 1916 at the age of about 43. He lived during a polycultural golden age before the collapse of the Empire and the near-oblivion of the two major non- Muslim peoples of Anatolia – Armenians and Greeks (the exodus of Turkish Jews came later). This acoustic, instrumental album imagines a musical evening with the master, and draws on a potpourri of traditions – from the different peoples living in Istanbul but also the different classes, especially court and peasant. Ali Fuat Aydın plays tanbur (tanbu- ra) and Cenk Güray plays bass lute (divan saz). Other musicians join them from time to time. Most of the pieces are folk tunes which were or could have been familiar to Cemil Bey, and some of them he recorded and perhaps com- posed or compiled.
The production and approach on Öte
(Yonder) is a tad dry but with a certain brisk brittleness which stops it from being dull. I would have liked them to have recorded not in a studio but in a space where Cemil Bey would have played. As befits the repertoire, I’m familiar with most of the tunes, which are a blur of Anatolian folk and art music (Turkish art music being the equivalent to classical music), with no hard and fast dividing line, except stylistic, between them. The playing is all good, if in a rather respectful way. No flourishes of liminal passion. The well- written English sleevenotes are informative.
There are fourteen pieces on the album, of which about half I like more than
others.The album hangs together well and is a light pleasure to listen to. Primarily for afi- cionados of the style, but not, I think, remark- able enough to warrant a wider audience.
felmay.it Nick Hobbs VARIOUS ARTISTS
The Rough Guide To Hokum Blues World Music Network RGNET1374CD
If there is no opportunity to physically leave your environment and given predicament, it is possible to contrive an escape via music, pouring out your troubles in a low-down blues… or losing them entirely in a lively, sub- versive, innuendo-filled ditty that some refer to as Hokum Blues, music that can make the
Photo: Jo Gedrych
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