MUSIC | Records – Jazz & World ALSO RELEASED
FINDLAY NAPIER VIP Very Interesting Persons (Cheerygroove Records) ●●●●● JON HOPKINS Late Night Tales (Late Night Tales) ●●●●●
Co-written with frequent collaborator Boo Hewerdine, this is a ten-song homage to various characters whose stories have inspired Napier (pictured above). It’s a fascinating mix: actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, baseball legend Mickey Mantle and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, all come to life in Napier’s charmingly reverent folk-acoustic collection. (Rachel Devine)
SIOBHAN MILLER Flight of Time (Vertical Records) ●●●●● Siobhan Miller takes tentative steps away from her traditional roots with this contemporary collection of songs written with Love and Money frontman James Grant. It’s the kind of safe distance that has seen the careers of Kate Rusby and Karine Polwart flourish, and Miller’s compositions have a similar potential, particularly those with the quirky inventiveness of standout track ‘No Butterflies’. (RD)
DOREC-A-BELLE Listen (Self-release/Creative Scot- land) ●●●●● All-female Inverness four-piece Doric-a-belle have been gigging for three years in the lead up to the release of debut album, Listen, a thoroughly enjoyable and superbly crafted collection, equally strong on musicianship and writing. The genesis is Scottish folk but it veers off in different directions, finding inspiration in blues, country and Southeastern European folk. (RD)
AARON FYFE 10 Songs (Tentman) ●●●●● Glaswegian Aaron Fyfe has a voice that is impossible to ignore, conveying that sense of song being a salve for all the world’s heartaches. Co-produced by Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Gordy Goudie and Teenage Fanclub’s Francis Macdonald, there is a polish and precision to 10 Songs that’s very promising. (RD)
Polymathic interpreter of moods Jon Hopkins creates a mixtape for the somnambulist’s favourite Late Night Tales series, He rises impressively to the challenge, maintaining a trance-like mood perfectly from Ben Lukas Boysen’s opening electro-lullaby ‘Sleepers Beat Theme’ to Holy Other’s slow- moving synth anthem ‘Yr Love’. (David Pollock)
LIGHTNING BOLT Fantasy Empire (Thrill Jockey) ●●●●●
Seeing this Rhode Island power duo live, their audience crowded around them on the floor, is such a distinctive and thrilling experience that it’s hard to recreate through a pair of headphones. But what the hell, this sixth album gives it a good try, with Brian Chippenham yelping his vocals through a fog of reverb and his own machine-gun drums, and Brian Gibson keeping a rein on some lacerating guitar riffs. (DP) KATHRYN JOSEPH Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled (Hits the Fan) ●●●●●
Scottish singer Kathryn Joseph's debut is populated by gentle and frostily dramatic piano ballads, her voice its key feature, a fluttering, folksy instrument which possesses a similar otherworldly quality to artists like Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom – or, rather strangely on ‘The Bone’, a sensuous twang reminiscent of Dolly Parton. (DP)
DANIEL AVERY New Energy (Collected Remixes) (Phantasy) ●●●●● Daniel Avery’s 2013 debut album Drone Logic didn’t so much reinvent techno as present a pristine contemporary version of it, drawing from iconic influences to create a sound that was both credible and crossover. While this remix-and-reimagine collection is varied and mostly excellent, the original is still the best. (DP)
74 THE LIST 5 Feb–2 Apr 2015
JAZZ & WORLD JAZZ MATANA ROBERTS Coin Coin Chapter 3: River Run Thee (Clean Feed) ●●●●●
For the third chapter in her epic work exploring the legacy of slavery, musician and activist Matana Roberts has created an extraordinary collage, bringing together jazz, blues, noise and spoken word in an approach she calls ‘panoramic sound quilting’. Previous chapters were ensemble works, but River Run Thee is a solo effort, with Roberts performing live overdubs of vocals, saxophone, electronics and samples across the base tracks.
Over ghostly harmonies and floating trails of saxophone, she layers multiple voices, reconstructing narratives of African-American history. Roberts’ texts include her grandfather’s poems and the diary of an English captain who sailed freed slaves back to Africa, around which she weaves fragments of folk song, fiery horn solos, and fissures of digital noise. Environmental recordings of New York and the American South connect memory to sensed experience. A remarkable album, both haunting and bold. (Stewart Smith)
JAZZ TROYKA Ornithophobia (Naim) ●●●●●
For listeners of a certain vintage, Troyka will recall the 1970s heyday of prog and jazz-rock. Ornithophobia even has a concept, being based around the winningly batty notion of giant mutant birds terrorising a post-apocalyptic London. Fortunately, the young British trio avoid the worst excesses of prog: the pomposity, the bombast, the sneering disdain for pop. Furthermore, their sound is gleamingly contemporary.
On opener ‘Arcades’, Troyka mimic the cut and paste aesthetic of electronic music, making sudden shifts between atmospheric EST-style piano jazz, antsy fusion, bluesy choogle and thrashing punk. ‘Life Was Transient’ and ‘Troyka Smash’ see the group’s real-time playing transformed into cubist prisms of spidery guitar, fragmented keyboards and micro-edited percussion. Troyka are ingenious, but likeable with it. (Stewart Smith) ■ Troyka play the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sun 8 Feb. WORLD ATA KAK Obaa Sima (Awesome Tapes from Africa) ●●●●●
Ata Kak’s Obaa Sima was the album which inspired ethnomusicologist Brian Shimkowitz to start his Awesome Tapes from Africa blog in 2006. His fascination with the Ghanaian singer and rapper began in 2002, when he chanced upon the obscure tape at a roadside stall in the West African nation’s Cape Coast. Over a decade later, Shimkovitz has finally tracked down Ata Kak (real name Yaw Atta-Owusu), allowing for the official
re-release of this idiosyncratic dance-pop gem. Recorded in 1992, Obaa Sima is an exuberant blend of Ghanaian highlife, hip hop and house. Atta-Owusu’s vocals are something else, ranging from keening melodic whelps and Michael Jackson squeals to giddy, high-speed rhymes. His rapping on ‘Adagya’ is particularly wild, as he spits what sounds like a mixture of street-chatter and cockney grime MC-ing over a bouncy house vamp. A joyous DIY pop nugget from a genuine one-off. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD TARAF DE HAIDOUKS Of Lovers, Gamblers and Parachute Skirts (Crammed Discs) ●●●●●
For their 25th anniversary album, the freewheeling Romani collective Taraf de Haidouks have returned to the older styles which first inspired them: Romanian ballads, Gypsy love songs, old-time dance tunes and Turkish-influenced instrumentals. Of Lovers, Gamblers and Parachute Skirts is also a tribute to late members of the group, with Tsagoi and Gheorghe Manole stepping into the shoes of their fathers, the great singers Neculae
Neacsu and Ion Manole.
On the dance tunes, violins and cymbalum fly at breakneck speeds over whomping bass, as joyous a sound as you could wish for. The creaking violins and creeping bass of ‘No Snow, No Rain’ wouldn’t sound out of place on a Tom Waits album, while the accordion-led ‘Marius’ Lament’ closes the album on a beautifully reflective note. (Stewart Smith)