6 March 2013, World Cafe

1 Jimi Tenor and Kabukabu – Curtain of Steel (Kindred Spirits)
Album: Mystery of Aether

Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor sounding like some 70s movie soundtrack ala Quincy Jones.  Listen out for his hand-made percussion instruments he created for this record.

2 Googoosh – Mano Tou (Finders Keepers)

Album: Googoosh

Talking about Quincy Jones and even John Barry infused pop music, pre-revolutionary Iran was a hot bed of this sort of thing, often buoyed up on middle eastern style strings and most sublime singing.  The wonderful, legendary Iranian pop star  on a collection brought out a fantastic label specializing in retrospectives often from the 70s.

3 Azila – Setareh (Light in the Attic – Pharaway Sounds)

Album: Zendooni: Funk, Psychedelia & Pop from the Iranian Pre-Revolution Generation

Pharaway Sounds is another respective, crate digging label, and they’re putting out some magnificent collections of stuff from pre-revolutionary 70s Iran and Afghanistan - restored from 45s and cassette recordings in the complete absence of the master tapes. 

4 Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra – March of the Idiots (First World Records)

Album: Towards other worlds

Sticking with big brass arrangements, but this time inspired explicitly by Fela Kuti and Tony Allen’s style of Afrobeat.  Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra hails from Leeds in the UK.

5 Samuel Yirga – Abet Abet (Punt Mix) (Real World)

Album: Guzo

 The young Ethiopian keyboardist from Dub Colossus on first proper solo album. 

6 uKanDanz – Mela mela (EthioSonic/Buda Musique)

Album: Yetchalal

Despite their cheesy name, the Lyon-based French Ethiojazz revival band sure know a thing or two by infusing classic Ethiopian tunes with rock n roll fury.  That was the old tune, Mela Mela, written and made famous by that huge star of Ethiopian music, Mahmoud Ahmed.  Ukandanz are a four-piece plus singer Asnaqe Gebreyes from Addis.

7 Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba – Me Fatigue Pas (Out Here)

Album: Jama Ko

The traditional Malian lute, the ngoni, over the last few years has moved from an accompanying instrument to a solo instrument, thanks largely to the playing and composing of Bassekou Kouyate.  Kouyate and his band, Ngoni Ba, have just released a seriously fabulous new album “Jama Ko” which means “big gathering of people” and in part is an angry and defiant call to resist the occupation of the north by radical Islamists and introduction of sheria law.  “Me Fatigue Pas” is a plea for the return of the tolerant Mali of the past – let’s hope the return to normality in the North can be sustained and the social fabric restored. 

8 Makan Badje Tounkara – Togna (Buda Musique)

Album: Sodjan

Makan Badje Tounkara is another great Malian lute or ngoni player, although he plays more stately music, perhaps more anchored in tradition.  Tounkara has, over the years, played with a lot of the greats of Malian music, including Kandia Kouyate and composer and band leader Sorry Bamba. “Togna” is off his new solo album, only his second one.

 9 Ba Cissoko – N’goni Ba (Cristal Records)

Album: Nimissa

We normally associate Ba Cissoko, from Guinea, with the electrified kora, but recently he added an ngoni to his bag of tricks –  it’s a “kamala ngoni”, which is smaller and tuned higher than the traditional ngoni and in fact was only invented in the 1960s.  Cissoko plays an 8 string version, but they go up to 12 strings.  His tune “Ngoni Ba” obviously references his name, Ba, but could be some kind of tribute to Bassekou Kouyate’s backing band.  Incidently, Namissa, is a real beaut – obtain forthwith.

10 Lau – Save the Bees (Reveal Records)

Album: Race the Loser

Kris Drever on guitar, Aidan O’Rourke on fiddle and Martin Green on accordion on their much lauded 2012 album.  They’re aided and abetted by the famous American producer, Tucker Martine, known for his with work with REM.  Tucker brings some electronica to the party – but on the whole it’s more folk than tronica. 

11 Sam Lee – The Ballad of George Collins (The Nest collective)
Album: Ground of its own

Until a few years ago Lee was a wilderness survival teacher, artist and unorthodox morris dancer.  He brought out a truly fantastic record out last year, that I raved about before.  This is a somewhat wayward arrangement of the obscure trad tune. 

12 PJ Harvey – Written of the Forehead (Universal/Island)

Album: Let England Shake
Last month I gave the great 70s reggae producer, Niney the Observer, a spin and mentioned that English indie star, PJ Harvey, is probably mainly responsible for his current career revival and his recent tour of the UK.  She uses samples of one of his most well known tunes, “Blood & Fire” as the basis of “Written on the forehead”.   

13 Niney featuring The Soul Syndicate – Blood Dub

Album: Present Dub

Classic tune which Steve Barrow ripped off to name his fine reggae re-issue label, which while still out there seems to have gone into some kind of dormancy.

14 Prince Fatty – And the Beat Goes On (Mr Bongo)
Album: Prince Fatty versus the Drum Gambler

Lightening the load drastically, the fun sounds of Prince Fatty together with Hollie Cook.

15 Horace Andy – Skylarking (Oliver Frost – Eva B’s Dub Version) (Echo Beach)

Album: Broken Beats

Veteran roots reggae singer-songwriter Horace Andy rerecorded a bunch of his legendary 70s songs for remixing in various kinds of dub-hop, dub-step and electro styles under auspices of the label Echo Beach.  Andy is no stranger to this sort of the thing having been an integral part of Massive Attack for quite a few years – you might have even seen him play in CT a bit more than 10 years ago. 

16 Mala – Ghost (Brownswood)
Album: Mala in Cuba

An early mover and shaker on the Acid Jazz scene in the late 90s, Gilles Peterson has gone onto be a BBC presenter and general curator of all things jazzy and dancy.  One of his projects is the Brownswood label – which sent the dubstep producer Mala off to Cuba to see what he could do.  The result is “Mala in Cuba”, and it’s basically more dubstep than Cuban … a lost opportunity some say. 

17 Calixto Ochoa y Los Papaupos  -- Lumbalu (Anolog Africa)

Album: Diablos del Ritmo 1960-1985: The Colombian Melting Pot

Staying on the Caribbean coast, the ridiculously good, crate digging re-issue label, Analog African, has put out a collection of obscure gems from the Colombia’s Caribbean coast, in fact mainly from around the city of Barranquilla. 

18 Jorge Ben – Hermes Trismegisto Escreveu (Universal) (Jorge Ben)

Album: Africa/Brasil

Post-Tropicalia, samba musician Jorge Ben off his totally classic record  released in 1976 after Ben have visited West Africa.  He met Fela Kuti, but the funk of Parliament is also major influence.

19 Bob Brozman – Banm Kalou Banm (Ruf Records)

Album: Fire in the mind

Changing continent, but not feel – player and collector of big old slide and resonator guitars, Bob Brozman, has a new album out. He does a wonderful song by Danyel Waro from Reunion on the album called “Banm Kolou Banm” sang in creole.  Music of the Indian Ocean islands often feel very Caribbean to me … not sure what it is about it.  Brozman is assisted by Jim Norris on drums.

20 Nathan Bowles – Cindy (Soft Abuse)
Album: A Bottle, A Buckeye

5 string, hollow-back banjo player with a traditional Appalachian tune off his album of solo banjer pieces.

21 Hot 8 Brass Band – Bingo Bango (Tru Thoughts)
Album: The Life and Times of ….

From Appalachia to the Gulf of Mexico, here is the one of the great preservers of NO marching music off their pretty marvelous 2012 album with their version of a Basement Jaxx tune.

22 Dr John – Ice Age (Nonesuch)

Album: Locked Down

That stalwart of NOLA musicproduced one of the best LPs of last year, “Locked Down”.  Many people think that “Ice Age” has a West African feel – CIA conspiracy theories have never sounded so seductive.

23 Aaron Neville – Work with Me Annie (Blue Note) (Hank Ballard) (Federal)
Album: My True Story

Aaron Neville, one of the Neville Brothers, is also synonymous with NOLA music, but one of the loves of his youth was do wop music. Blue Note has recently put out an album of his versions of do wop classics produced by Keith Richards and Don Was.  Neville’s version of Hank Ballard’s 1954 tune “Work with me Annie” – which the Federal Communications Commission originally tried to restrict because it thought it to sexually explicit.  It went to number 1 in the R&B charts and stayed there for seven weeks anyway.  Incidently, Richards is on guitar.

24 Illaiyaraaja - Ponnana Neram (feat S Janaki) (Finders Keepers)

Album: Solla Solla

Kollywood is the Tamil-language film capital Kodambakkam in the South of India.  Its music is given far less airplay than Bollywood music, even though it’s home of legendary composer AR Rahman.  However, probably more radical and everything but the kitchen sinkish than Rahman is Illaiyaraaja.  Illaiyaraaja got going in 1970s and has scored over 950 movies.  Finders Keepers have brought out a bunch of collections of his stuff.  The song features the wonderful playback singer S Janaki.

 
















25 KS Chithra – Oru Pooncholai (feat SP Balasubramaniyam) (Finders Keepers)

Album: K S Chithra

From a different collection of Kollywood music on Finders Keepers, this one under the name of most prolific playback singers, K S Chitra, here she is with, S P Balasubramaniyam, a legendary Kollywood singer with the raga-like “Oru Pooncholai”.

26 Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory – Particle (Rough Trade)
Album: Elements of Sound

Techno producer Hendrik Weber first collaborated with campanologists, the Bell Labatoratory, at the Oya Festival in Oslo in 2011.  For this studio outing they are calling themselves “Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory”.  The Bell Lab play a bell carillon – a  three ton instrument consisting of 50 bronze bells.

27 Giovanni Di Domenico, Arve Henriksen, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto – Charivari (and/OAR)

Album: Distare Sananti

 From another of Norweigian trumpeter, Ave Hendriksen’s projects – the 2012 album on and/OAR with keyboardist Giovanni di Domenico and percussionist and drummer Tatsuhiso Yamamoto, called “Distare Sananti”.  As he does often, he’s exploring fourth world sounds – a kind of floating, ambient global fusion set in motion by Miles Davis, and Jon Hassel and Brian Eno. 

28 1982 & BJ Cole – 03-43 (Hubro Music)

Album: 1982 & BJ Cole

The incredibly beautiful sound of the Norweigan folk-jazz improv group 1982 teaming up with the great English pedal steel player, BJ Cole.