117 f
FRED SMITH Great Fred Smith FS0011
If it weren’t for the awkward fact that Fred Smith is an Australian (and remains based there), we could slot him neatly into the same Americana bracket as Steve Earle, James McMurtry and Townes van Zandt.
Smith’s music has always carried the stamp of US folk and country influences, so it’s natural enough that he’s decided to fill this whole double CD with songs about America. The album as a whole amounts to a patchwork portrait of everything he finds most appealing and appalling about the place. It’s never crudely polemical though, relying instead on 24 of Smith’s own charac- ter-driven story songs and wry humour to get its points across.
Along the way, he convincingly tackles every style of American music imaginable, from wah-wah soaked funk (Nice To Meet You) to hard, angry blues (Satisfied), Nirvana- style thrash (My Girlfriend) and late-night bass-and-congas soul (Frederique Q Love). The narrators he conjures include a dustbowl farmer (Little Jimmy Boy), a Vietnam vet (Sis- ter Sandinista) and a certain toxic dimwit named Trump (What Could Go Wrong).
Smith takes this opportunity to revisit five songs from his back catalogue too, using the extra musicians now at his disposal to give them a fuller, warmer sound. I miss the twangy baritone guitar which originally fuelled 2010’s Zebrugge FOB – it’s replaced here by Gareth Mewes’ violin – but that’s my only quibble as far as these ‘retakes’ are con- cerned. Texas, which dates from 2006, remains one of his most enjoyable songs, so it’s good people get another chance to dis- cover it here.
Other standouts include the atmospheric American Guitar, which extends Smith’s own US wanderings to a telling metaphor of the wider immigrant experience, and Emily Rose’s tender account of a daughter lost in infancy. Greezy Spoon’s a treat too – thanks largely to some wonderfully snakey electric guitar – and so’s the fast, ska’d up rocker Backwoods Bum.
fredsmith.com.au Paul Slade ARASH MORADI & HABIB
MEFTAH The Bridge Arash Moradi & Habib Meftah MRDI01
Arash Moradi plays the tanbour, a relative to the bouzouki and saz. He was born in the Kur- dish city of Kermanshah in Western Iran but now lives in London. He is the eldest son of Iran’s leading tanbour player Ali Akbar Mora- di. On this CD he is joined by Habib Meftah on percussion. Moradi uses the old tanbour maqams (modes) to construct his own compo- sitions which seldom wander far from the essential structure of those modes. The tunes vary from reflective, melodic improvisations like the opening track, Whispered Passages, to the Macedonian sounding Shalaan and onto full blown dance workouts like Hewraz.
Moradi’s phrasing and sense of rhythm are impeccable. He is about as sure-footed as you can get, not a note is wasted, everything is in perfect alignment and superbly supported by Habib Meftah’s sympathetic percussion. Full marks for keeping the recording simple with no overdubs. Essentially it is Moradi and Mef- tah playing live in the studio and it is magical.
It would take an experienced ear to dis-
tinguish the difference between Moradi’s original compositions and purely traditional playing with the exception of track six, Gilded Dust, which starts conventionally but then explores a variety of chords, discords and
rhythmic possibilities alternating between rhythmic passages and free-flowing improvi- sations. This is an excellent album, sensitively recorded, and a flagship for the tanbour which I will continue to listen to long after this review is published.
Mark T
GIGSPANNER BIG BAND Live Gigspanner GSCD005
Even before leaving Steeleye Peter Knight was itching to extend his creativity. In many conver- sations he’d outlined plans that sounded glori- ous and hopeful, and so he departed Span on a writing high and threw himself headlong into Gigspanner. Since then the albums have come thick and fast, as have the collaborations. The Big Band joins the core trio to Edgelarks. “We’ll just have to see what happens,” he merrily quipped when asked about possibilities and having seen what possibilities abounded after the studio comes the live album.
Released somewhat under the radar and in limited form, I guess because their gigs together are such rare occasions, nonetheless the album’s deserving of higher profile if only for delivering much of its initial promise and for the way it joyously winds tradition into unfathomable knots of twisting improvisa- tion, never knowing whether they can be untangled. Recorded some eighteen months ago when the collaboration was freshly mint- ed at Nettlebed Folk Club, this is the sound of musicians loving what they do and doing it for sheer exhilaration. Matters fall together splendidly, the folk influences emerge at dif- ferent times, sometimes obvious as on Hard Times Of Old England which is actually far more downbeat than the version on All Around My Hat, or sometimes back in the mix as on the opening Butterfly where the blues, Indian raga and Celtic reeling meet in a glori- ous mash-up. Banks Of The Nile is quietly seething, the waste of a military life when weighed against true love. Hannah Martin is never less than splendid.
Death And The Lady rides a spookily heavy-duty groove and Peter Knight’s vocal sounds appropriately macabre and sinister, while the closing version of the evergreen and highly adaptable King Of The Fairies – maybe you know Horslips pounding rock jig – is pushed and pulled into amorphous shape which flows with expertly steered ease into lush extemporisation, clocking eight
Gabacho Maroc
minutes of melodic invention. Not a weak track on here, this may be tricky but it’s damn clever as well.
Where next Peter? I know his answer:
“We’ll just have to see what happens.”
gigspanner.com
Simon Jones
GABACHO MAROC Tawassol 10h10
If you’ve listened to much music from Moroc- co, then you will be familiar with Gnawa. It is often fast-paced, intense and hypnotic, with speedy polyrhythms designed to take people into a trance. Gabacho Maroc have their roots in Gnawa, but their approach is more mellow and exploratory, drawing on influ- ences from all around the world.
From the very first full track Bouderbala, the polyrhythms quickly take hold, with claps and krakebs playing perfectly interlocking parts. As it progresses, there is much more that builds in; spacey pad sounds on the key- board, smooth, multilayered horns, even the occasional burst of French rapping. The musi- cal styles vary throughout to keep you engaged. Dara has an ’80s funk sound, at times like a Moroccan version of one of Stevie Wonder’s later rocking numbers. Desertum is a dreamy, inquisitive piece with rich deep voices and a more spacious arrangement. Laabid is a reggae rock tune, and Btassem is a more experimental piece, where the jazz influences that are ever-present on the album really come to the fore.
All in all it’s very well produced. Even with such a range of styles of songs – and with a different guest artist on almost every other track – the overall mix and mastering is so smooth that all songs blend together seamlessly to create one richly textured sound. The title means “connection”, and this is certainly a very well-connected group of musicians. Their rhythmic precision and com- bination of separate parts on tracks like Amara Moussaoui are second to none.
Gabacho Maroc have only been together for five years, but in that time have played over 200 gigs in festivals and events around the world, and are on their way to doing much more.
10h10-music.com Joshua Coppersmith-Heaven
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