speed, Hong Kong Cinema and Chuck Berry porn’ say the sleeve notes. Hard to ignore and even harder to resist, this is compul50ry listening for anyone burnin’ rubber and runnin' stop lights en route to a monster truck meet. (LT)
HIP HOP
Various Artists
Rock It (Sony) it * a: var
The world needs another hip hop compilation like it needs a hole in the head - right? Maybe so but then Rock It is no ordinary compilation. Lovingly put together by the folks at London's specialist vinyl store Mr Bongo, this deluxe double CD/quadruple vinyl collection takes you on a guided tour through the high points of hip hop’s first golden age circa ’79-’86. Sequenced to run chronologically and with tracks presented in unedited, long out of print 12' versions, Rock /t is effectively an audio encyclopaedia of New York street style. Appropriater rolling off with the epic fourteen and a half minute version of the Sugarhill Gang's ‘Rapper's Delight', Rock /t moves through an era-defining succession of classic tracks from Kurtis Blow, Funk Four Plus One, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Herbie Hancock, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J and the Beasties while also finding room for a handful of period body- rocking electro instrumentals. As a document of a time and sound now consigned to the history books this is virtually without equal. (LT)
A Tribe Called Quest
The Love Movement (Jive) * 1k i: t
The arrival of a Tribe Called Quest’s fifth album is something of a bittersweet experience — lip smackin’ booty time for all aficionados of quality hip hop yet mixed with a bitter aftertaste which comes from news that this is to be the Tribe's last album. Ever since their arrival with People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm back in 1990, the Tribe have been consistently breathing life into hip hop alongside fellow standard bearers De La Soul and Gang Starr. And so they continue here, armed with the instantly recognisable and deceptively simple Tribe sound — that charmed combination of Q-Tip and Phife's sharp verbal sparring sat atop Ali’s bumping beats and minimalist vibed up production. Ultimately The Love Movement, which comes with a free CD of rare and unreleased tracks, is the sound of the Tribe bowing out with typically effortless style (LT)
COUNTRY
Gillian Welch
Hell Among The Yearlings (Almo Sounds) tr * * wk
Singer and songwriter Gillian Welch's debut album was one of the best left- field country albums of the decade, and this eagerly awaited follow up is every bit as good. Welch and her guitarist partner David Rawlings work in a sparse, evocative, darkly melancholic acoustic country vein which lies at an opposite pole to the overblown country-pop norms of contemporary Nashville, delving back into the authentic folk and hillbilly roots of the music, but with an unmistakable contemporary feel.
Seriously good stuff, anyone into singers like Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams should check her out immediately. (KM)
Lambchog What Another an Spills (City Slang) 1k air air 1*: ‘k
This, their fifth album, is another hugely fine set from Kurt Wagner’s floating Nashville country collective. Perhaps the best yet. It drifts in on the largely instrumental 'Interrupted', a warm, weary predawn golden highway Spread of the sort David Lynch might have used at the heart of an endless cut of Wild at Heart, setting much of the tone to come. Wagner's handcrafted music is at once knowing and naive, a friendly noise that likes you, quietly pointing out how weird most things are with a yawn and an offer of whiskey on the porch later. Though mostly snoozy, strange and rustic, a soaring shuffle cover of ’Give Me Your Love’ Mayfields with the best of them and the closing ’Theme from the Neil Miller Show' is a shitkickin' hootenanny going, laughing, over a cliff. A Stan Laurel among records. (DL)
FOLK A.L. Llo d, Ewan MacCol , Roy Harris
and Others
Round Cape Horn, Bold Sportsmen All, English Drinking Songs (Topic) *****
The first batch of approximately 40 CD's documenting the traditional music of the British Isles, and culled from the archives of one of the first speciality ’folk’ labels. To be released over the coming year, these are not just reissues, they’ve been re-mastered, additional tracks added, sleeves redesigned and notes updated. If the younger generation seem to be growing up with no knowledge of the great wealth of song, especially English song, then these albums should serve as a corrective. And what singing: the sea-songs album also includes Louis Killen, Frankie Armstrong, The Watersons, Peter Bellamy and Cyril Tawney (the latter's surname amusingly misspelt on the cover). The sparing accompaniment is played by, among others, the late, great Alf Edwards on squeeze box, and the very-much-with- us Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. Required listening. (NC)
Seelyhoo Leetera (Greentrax) at * 1k 1k
The second album from the Edinburgh- based band who take granny's favourite fiddle, accordion and Gaelic song, stir in keyboards, bass and drums and serve up a Scots roots salad for the 90s. Much more of an ensemble sound than their first recording, their relaxed musicality is centred on the ace accordion skills of Sandy Brechin and the quicksilver fiddle alchemy of Orkney's Wrigley Sisters. There are tasty instrumental grooves a-plenty, and among the traditional songs in contemporary settings are a few newly-composed songs in Gaelic by their lead singer Fiona Mackenzie: a healthy sign for the language as it gains new status among the post-Run Rig generation. (NC)
record reviews MUSIC
JAZZ Roland Kirk
The Inflated Tear (Rhino) tr 1r 'k 11'
In stylistic terms, this is one of the multi-reed man's most approachable albums, and as good an introduction as there is to his idiosyncratic music. It is one of five specially re-packaged albums re-released to mark the 50th Anniversary of Atlantic Records, alongside two by John Coltrane, and one apiece from Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. The cardboard wrap-round won’t win many friends, but the miniature LP sleeves are nice, and the accompanying booklets are informative. All five are classics, and each would get maximum stars on purely musical grounds, but asking full price is greedy, eSpecially since many additional Atlantic re-issues are imminent at a more acceptable mid- price. (KM)
CLASSICAL BBC SSO
MacKenzie/Tovey Piano Concertos (Hyperion) a stir wk t
The BBC SSO are in splendid form under conductor Martyn Brabbins in this latest installment of Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concertos series, a timely release in the light of the Festival performance of Tovey’s Cello Concerto. The disc resurrects that composer's attractive Piano Concerto in A for its first-ever recording, and couples it with a further excavation into the neglected repertone of the Scottish composer Alexander MacKenzie, in the shape of his Scottish Concerto, also a first recording. Steven Osborne is the brilliant soloist in both works, and there is enough of genuine musical as well as historical interest to hold the attention. (KM)
Mojave 3 Some Kinda Angel (4A0) skunk
A sweet Soul/Country groove that goes nowhere in particular but goes there breezin enough with a big gooey heart and a sloppy grin the breadth of Texas. Reminiscent of Primal Scream in soothed, bruised and blissed-out mood, it taps gingerly on Heaven's cat— flap but lacks the muscle to push on through. (PW)
Annie Christian: show you the other way
Whistler
If I Give You A Smile (Wiija) **‘K* Phew. What could so easily be nauseatingly fey and mannered becomes, in the tender hands of Whistler, a thing of mesmerising, brittle-boned beauty. The lead song sees the singer flatly intoning the sad manifesto of a tired, dying relationship like some melancholic platform announcer. Buy this and weep. (PW)
Annie Christian The Other Way (VZ/Equippe Ecosse) *1“:
Unarguably T'Christian’s finest offering thus far, their patented tailspin rrrrush this time topped With a tune you could actually whistle (if one were so inclined). Should see ’em tickling the charts finally but, chaps, what’s with the 'scary’ glowing eyes on the inlay? Were you drunk? (PW)
Ma 00 Swiss order Escape (Chemikal Underground) **
Oh Magoo, you've done it again. Another rattling morsel of nothing-in- particular that prostrates itself in lunatic subservience to the unholy church of 'guitars’ and ’indie’, like some bone—suckin' neanderthal cowering in slack-Jawed awe at the noon-day sun. So damn ’white’ you could splash it on your cornflakes and call it milk. (PW)
Tiger
Friends (Island) ~+i
Responsible for the mighty ’On A Rose’ and countless bad mullet gags, Tiger return with what can only be described as a shit single. The singer does such a blatant Mark E Smith impression it must be a joke, which makes this a novelty single which, by definition, makes it a hideous, festering canker on the freshly squeezed buttocks of pop. The B-Sides are appalling. (PW)
REVIEWER THIS ISSUE
Norman Chalmers, Damien Love, Kenny Mathieson, Fiona Shepherd, Lawrie Thomas, Jonathan Trew, Paul Whitelaw
STAR RATINGS * 1k 1k it * Unmissable * * i 4: Very ood * 11' ii Wort a shot * * Below average it You've been. warned
10—24 Sep 1998 THE “ST”