world music
mark.kidel
This is an enchanting album which brings together four outstanding musicians, brilliant in their own right, but also adept at the kind of collaboration in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.The distinguished cellist Vincent Ségal – with roots as varied as can be imagined – has known how to bring out the excellent musicianship of the Malian kora-player Ballaké Sissoko, in a series of beautiful albums for the adventurous French label No Format, which has once again brought the two perfectly matched players together. They are joined by accordionist Vincent Peirani and Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of the greatest things a musical artist can achieve is world building. That is, creating a distinctive type of environment, language and coordinates for everything they do such that the listener is forced to come into the musical world, and to engage with it on its own terms rather than by comparison. It’s something that musicians as diverse as Prince, Kate Bush and Wu-Tang Clan achieve have achieved, likewise plenty of more underground creators too.Belgian polymath Marc Hollander has achieved this in particularly special way. Over more than 45 years, he’s built his sonic world not only Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Steve Mason has been impressively blunt about the inspiration behind his fifth solo album. “To me, this record is a massive “Fuck you” to Brexit and a giant “Fuck you” to anyone that is terrified of immigration,” he’s said, “Because there is nothing that immigration has brought to this country that isn’t to be applauded.” Thus, these 12 songs are riven not only with lyrical pith but also sounds borrowed from an international sound palette.The combination leavens his anger with the spiritual uplift of righteous protest. Mason has always been creatively restless, right from when the Beta Band Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Ka Huma” by Ivo Nilakreshna sounds as if a jazz band was taking on rock ’n’ roll. There’s a swing and sway, busy rhythm guitar and a lead female voice singing a yearning melody. An instrument which seems to vibes is in there. But there’s more than the familiar elements. Most of the influences are unrecognisable.Zaenal Combo’s “Tandung Tjina” is an rocking instrumental with a comparable otherness. There’s a kinship with California surf band The Pyramids’s “Penetration” but, again, the primary building blocks are out of reach. Both tracks appear to have sprung from an unfamiliar well.And so it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Descarga Royal" by Los Royal’s de Pucallpa opens proceedings. After flurries of wobbly wah-wah guitar, a driving percussion bed interweaves with a rolling guitar figure. Then, about two minutes in, the guitarist steps on the fuzz pedal. Groovy. Psychedelic too. The band’s name is taken from the tropical east-Perú city of Pucallpa, located on the Amazon tributary river Ucayali.Further in, "Humo En La Selva" by Los Invasores De Progreso is as groovy and also features fuzz guitar along with vocal chants. Progreso is located in inland south-western Perú along the Apurímac, another Amazon Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Oslo World organisers are at pains to point out that, despite the name, they are not a “world music” festival. And with good reason, really. There may have been a few familiar WOMAD veterans headlining over the week-long event – Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour, Malie's Fatoumata Diawara, the queen of Cuba Omara Portuondo – but the emphasis was emphatically not on any kind of beads-and-bongoes authenticity.Far from it: even in just the three days I was there the culture on offer in venues across Oslo felt more like a trip into a giddy sci-fi vision than the worthy anthropologist’s guide to other Read more ...
Tim Cumming
A minute before coming on stage, the audience is asked to observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the Halloween tragedy in the central Itaewon district of the South Korean capital of Seoul. The stage is dark, clouds of dry ice forming a vignette around the three sets of instruments – Ham Minhwi’s bass guitar and pedals, Jang Dohyuk’s drums and Yun Eunhwa’s personalised yanggeum, or hammered dulcimer – and when they walk on stage and set themselves up, we in the audience remain silent until Yun Eunhwa starts to play.It’s a sombre and focused start to a striking and arresting journey in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Orkos was originally released in 1979 on cassette. The only album by Egyptian singer Maha seems to have been little known. The liner notes for its first-ever reissue say “it was not a success when it was originally released. While nobody remembers the exact numbers, sales must have been very limited and the project was quickly forgotten about and no follow up release was produced.”Elsewhere, the text recounts how a copy was found in 2019 in a “very dusty plastic box on a shelf” in a shop in Cairo’s Zamalek district.However, Maha hadn’t been a shadowy presence. She was in her brother's band Read more ...
Tim Cumming
South-African cellist Abel Selaocoe is about to begin his third major concert in London in under a year. As the support artist for kora player Ballake Sissoko and cellist Vincent Segal at the Roundhouse in January, he received a lengthy ovation for his 30 minute set, having demonstrated an uncanny ability to play the audience as dexterously as he plays his cello.A few months later, he appeared with the Manchester Collective at the Southbank Centre, performing some of the pieces that make up his debut album on Warner Classics, Where is Home, alongside works by Stravinsky, Vivaldi and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After a burst of gun-shot drumming, “Hot Coffee” instantly hits its groove. Simple but insistent guitar, a rubbery bass line and electric organ all fall into line. For the instrumental’s two-and-half minutes, it is unstoppable.“Gig Soul Party” is as tight but more ornate as the organ playing incorporates flourishes. There’s a spindly solo guitar line and some funky-drummer drumming too. But it’s as effective. Dance floors would have been crowded.Then there’s “Soul Crazy,” another instrumental with the same emphasis on a rigid rhythmic foundation and forward motion. A guitar solo is minimal Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although Raf Vilar grew up in Rio De Janeiro he has been based in London for over a decade, where his second album Clichê was recorded. It appears on a label operating from Malmö, Sweden. In keeping with this internationalism, what’s emerged isn’t wholly identifiable as a Brazilian album. His 2011 first was unequivocally titled Studies In Bossa. Now, the designation is more inscrutable.Clichê ends with its title track. Jazzy, with a Bossa Nova lilt, it is intimate, quiet and restrained. The lyrics are in Portuguese, so immediate understanding is difficult – but clichê does translate as cliché Read more ...