059: Fiesta Songs, by Señor Coconut and his Orchestra

Señor Coconut and His Orchestra (Germany/Denmark)
Fiesta Songs (2003)
11 tracks, 44 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

Uwe Schmidt is a man with a million aliases. Most of his musical guises are based on various types of electronica – techno, IDM, ambient – but after he moved to Santiago de Chile in the 1990s, he put together a Latin orchestra and added an extra alias to the pile, becoming Señor Coconut. His previous work brought an element of amusement to the proceedings, and his albums as Señor Coconut carried on that theme – the first big release under that name was a tribute to Kraftwerk, performed as if they were a traditional South American ensemble. Fiesta Songs dropped most of that ‘traditional’ ruse, but the musical humour is still there.

Most of the tracks on the album are covers of pop and rock music – ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Riders on the Storm,’ ‘Beat It,’ ‘Oxygène, Part 2,’ that sort of thing – as if they were done by a New York-style salsa orchestra, and bringing other styles such as cha-cha-cha, mambo and bolero into the mix. So, you have an ensemble of mostly German and Danish musicians playing Latin music with a heavy wink and under a ridiculous name. Yes, it may be a little bit gimmicky, but who cares? It’s fun, and good! Bonus points for a couple of really cool tenor sax solos by [checks discogs.com] Thomas Hass scattered throughout.

Fiesta Songs isn’t entirely divorced from Schmidt/Coconut’s electronic roots. There are drum machines, programmed doodads and creative production on a couple of tracks, and even when there isn’t, there is sometimes some vague feeling of electronica in the way that percussion and horns are used. It’s most audible on the appropriately-titled ‘Electrolatino,’ one of only three original compositions on the album.

With this album, Señor Coconut y su conjunto create a combination that I love – light-hearted and humorous music, but played with high-level musicianship. It’s fun for all layers of the brain!

058: Music from Southern Laos, by Molam Lao

Molam Lao (Laos)
Music from Southern Laos (1994)
11 tracks, 61 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I implore you, dear reader, to listen to the first two tracks of this album along with me. It starts with ‘Pheng Sat Niao,’ which is a duet for two khaen players. If you’re listening along, you probably already understand why I love the khaen and this music so much, right from the first few notes. The rhythm has a heavy swing, the pentatonic melody is really bluesy and the instrument’s quite harsh tone makes the frequent dissonances all the more juicy. It’s so funky! The next track is ‘Lam Saravane.’ It starts again with solo khaen, but then in comes the ensemble: finger cymbals, rattle, a mandolin-like kachapi, and then a singer with such a cool voice, yodelling slightly and sounding every bit the South-East Asian blues singer. It’s so funky! Again!

Those two tracks encapsulate the album so well. Let’s talk a little bit about what we’re hearing, then. This is molam music from Laos (it’s also found in north-east Thailand). It’s essentially country music; it deals with tales of everyday life and love in the rural areas, with a lot of humour to go along with it. And what about that wonderful instrument that sounds half like a bagpipe and half like someone sawing a plank of wood, the khaen? It’s a free-reed mouth organ, which means that it is quite similar to a harmonica organologically…although not to look at: it has two rows of large bamboo pipes that are blown into all at once, and sounded by stopping a hole in each pipe.

I just can’t get over how much of this music – so important as a folk tradition in Laos and Thailand – sounds so much like so much else, while remaining obviously traditional. You can hear so much in there if you tune your ear for it. There’s funk, there’s blues – I spent a fun five minutes earlier jamming some mouth-blues along to ‘Lam Thangvay,’ then the next piece, ‘Phet Sat Soy,’ switched it up again and gave me real Steve Reich vibes.

When I first properly listened to the khaen and molam music, I thought I had the idea that it would sound great alongside some dub production. Well, it was a good idea, but too good because it had already been done: Jah Wobble got there roughly 15 years before me with his album Molam Dub, featuring many of the same musicians as are found on this one. The artwork for Wobble’s album is even by my mate, the gentleman Neil Sparkes – how did I not know about this?? Ah well.

By making all these comparisons, I realise that maybe I’m devaluing the music somewhat. I assure you that that is just a function of my lizard brain making snap connections between similar types of pitch manipulation and acoustic beating along with probably some deeply ingrained and barely avoidable Western frame-of-reference. Molam music doesn’t need my comparisons – it should, can, and very much does stand on its own. Enjoy it – whatever you get out of it.

057: Youth, by Matisyahu

Matisyahu (USA)
Youth (2006)
13 tracks, 47 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

The first time I'd heard of Matisyahu was on Later…with Jools Holland. He was dressed in a simple white shirt and a long black coat, with a large bushy beard on his chin and a kippah on his head. And then the incongruity: he was spewing some fast and accomplished beatbox directly into the mic. Then his band kicked in with some bass-heavy reggae. It was the first time this northern-English village lad had encountered Chasidism – and I wouldn’t have expected it to sound like this.

The album he was playing from on Jools was his second from the studio, Youth. The music is reggae, but with heavy doses of rock (from the band) and hip-hop (from Matisyahu’s raps), and others besides. It’s also produced by veteran electronica/world music/everything wiz Bill Laswell, who adds a welcome bucketload of dub into the mix.

The music is good in and of itself, but it’s the lyrics that make this album particularly interesting. As it was made back when Matisyahu was Chasidic (he’s since moved to a more mainstream version of orthodox Judaism), the words and themes of Youth are very relevant to that lifestyle. There’s lots of talk of God, references to scripture and religious philosophy and Judaically-informed guidance and advice. In the end, a lot of the lyrics sound rather similar to those of roots reggae, albeit with 100% less Jah.

It’s not perfect: the occasional use of a cod-Jamaican accent is a tad embarrassing and some of the rockier bits are quite cheesy, but 2006 is just about getting long enough ago to start looking regrettable, so let’s forgive the album a couple of dated elements.

A nice little thing to note is that alongside the standard record, a limited edition dub version was released too. Excitingly entitled Youth Dub, this side-release allowed Laswell to go nuts with all his creative might, and bringing Matisyahu’s backing band, Roots Tonic, to the fore. I love a dub remix album, so it’s all good by me. I can’t find Youth Dub to listen to anywhere online, and its rarity means it’s going for mad money second-hand – if you want to listen, drop me a message.

056: Au Cabaret Sauvage, by Lo'Jo

Lo’Jo (France)
Au Cabaret Sauvage (2002)
12 tracks, 45 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to listen or download this album in the UK. It’s on Spotify if you’re from elsewhere (might work in France?) and there are some tracks on YouTube and Vimeo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), but that’s it. Weird. Hit me up and I can sort you out with a download.

[Introductory note: some versions of this album were called L’une des Siens but I’ve no idea why they decided to change it – the insides remained the same. The cover is also basically the same too, so if you see that one about…it’s this one.]

I can’t remember whether it was myself or my dad (our record collections are basically one and the same by now), but one of us got this album at a second-hand CD shop in Lyme Regis. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of that shop – I’ve even been scouring Google Street View to no avail, so I guess it must have gone the way of so many of the best record shops and closed since I was last there. A shame, because over the few times we visited Lyme Regis, we picked up a bunch of great albums there, including several that will feature on this list.

Lo’Jo are long-time veterans of what is easiest (and laziest, vaguest) to call ‘world fusion,’ but where a lot of musicians in the scene went the electronica-with-samples route, Lo’Jo did it all live. With a core of smokily charismatic singer and keys player Denis Péan and Algerian singer-multi-instrumentalist sisters Nadia and Yamina Nid El Mourid, the group introduce as many guests as musical styles, creating their own sound which mixes variously French folk music, classical, Latin, North African, manouche jazz, spoken word, flamenco and even dub and circus music, and anything else that catches their ear. This is chamber music for the internationally-eared.

On Au Cabaret Sauvage, Lo’Jo draw particular influence from Tuareg music, both traditional styles and the essouf guitar music made famous by Tinariwen, foreshadowing the French band’s many appearances at the Festival au Désert in the coming years. Tuareg sounds are all over the album, and it even features cameos from various members of Tinariwen, including Mohamed Ag Illale, better known as Japonais, who gets a track all to himself (odds are you won’t have seen him live even if you’re a big fan of the Tuareg group – he never took part in the touring band, preferring to stay close to the desert).

There are a bunch of great tracks on this album, but the one that stood out in particular on relistening to write this entry was ‘Petit Homme.’ It brings so many of the band’s influences together in a really effective way. The interplay between the guitar riff, Tuareg imzad (one-stringed fiddle) and bendir (frame drum with gut strings) gives a wonderful Saharan-hued bed for Péan’s gruff poetry and Pablo-ish melodica.

Over the years there have been so many projects that aim to mash-up music from everywhere into one whole, but few that do it with the subtlety, class and charm of Lo’Jo, and Au Cabaret Sauvage (or L’une des Siens) shows their work at its strongest.

055: Moorish Music from Mauritania, by Khalifa Ould Eide & Dimi Mint Abba

Khalifa Ould Eide & Dimi Mint Abba (Mauritania)
Moorish Music from Mauritania (1990)
11 tracks, 68 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

This album was one of the first releases from the now-legendary World Circuit Records, as well as one of the earliest releases of Mauritanian music intended for a wider international audience.

The music of Mauritania is a mirror to the country’s geographic and cultural position. Mostly in the Sahara desert, the country marks the crossover between the Arabic and Berber cultures to the north and the Mande, Songhai and Wolof cultures to the south. The music of the Bidhan (or Moorish) population of Mauritania reflects this well: their melodies are mostly pentatonic but with ornaments that sound almost like classical Arabic music at points; their string instruments such as the ardin and tidinit resemble the donsongoni and the ngoni of the south, but their drums and percussion are more Arabic. It’s a fascinating sound, but what really attracts me is that it is so, so bluesy all the way through. Just listen to the chorus melody on the first track, ‘Waidalal Waidalal’ – it’s got some crystal clear examples of blues notes that make me want to do a full-on power ballad fist-pump.

Although guitarist and tidinit player Khalifa Ould Eide is given the first credit on the album cover, I cast no shade upon his skill when I say that it is most definitely Dimi Mint Abba who is the star of this one. Her voice is sublime. The control she holds over the notes she sings is absolute, allowing her to make incredibly subtle changes to the pitch and tone to give the slightest difference in inflection, changing the whole emotional atmosphere of a passage. Her high notes soar over the low-pitched tbal drums and she can go from quiet and delicate to straight-up roaring without so much as a blink. She was said to be the favourite singer of Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, and it’s a real pity that there seems to be no recordings of them playing together – especially as they both shared a record label for a long time.

Mauritania is still rather underrepresented on the world stage of music, I feel, although lately a star has emerged in Noura Mint Seymali – perhaps it’s not a coincidence that she is Dimi Mint Abba’s step-daughter. Whether it is the more traditional style of music as heard on Moorish Music from Mauritania or the rockier stuff that Noura has been making the world dance to, I would love for this wonderful music to get more exposure. Maybe I should start a #MoreMauritanianMusic campaign…

054: ¡Ay Caramba!, by Ska Cubano

Ska Cubano (UK/Cuba/Jamaica/everywhere else)
¡Ay Caramba! (2005)
17 tracks, 60 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Maybe it’s a bit of an overexaggeration to say that this album directly led to me becoming a music writer, but not by much. The very first time I ever read a copy of Songlines Magazine, I stuck the free CD in the machine, pressed play and *BAAA BAAA BAM!* da da da da *BAAA BAAA BAM!*

Wow.

The first track on that sample CD was ‘Oye Compay Juan’ from this album, ¡Ay Caramba! by Ska Cubano. The stereo was turned up way too loud – or maybe the exactly correct volume - and those opening horn blasts and timbale runs went through me like electric. I devoured that magazine and haven’t really stopped since. And now I’m a writer. So there’s a link there somewhere, possibly.

Ska Cubano have such a simple idea, spelled out in their name – ska, but if it were Cuban – but it just works so well. It’s kind of amazing that it hadn’t been tried before…or if it had, it didn’t get anywhere near the traction of Ska Cubano. Add in hints of calypso, klezmer, cumbia and little bits of other stuff and you get this wonderfully infectious album. It’s all made by utterly top-class musicians, from the squealing clarinets to the jangly trés and the cheeky vocals of Beny Billy (Cuban, in Spanish) and Natty Bo (British, in English).

When you listen to this album, sitting still is impossible – it will electrify you just as it did me 14 (wtf) years ago. Get up and dance around till your head drops off.

053: NES Jams, by Shnabubula

Shnabubula (USA)
NES Jams (2012)
11 tracks, 38 minutes
Bandcamp (free download)

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s quite a few video game soundtracks on this list (under-appreciated artform yadda yadda), but this album isn’t quite that. All the tracks included on NES Jams are – as the title suggests – taken from various soundtracks of games originally made for the Nintendo Entertainment System. These are old school games from the 1980s, and their music was made up of the 8-bit bleep-bloopery that makes chiptune such a recognisable sound.

Shnabubula usually makes his own chiptune music, composed and programmed by himself, inspired by the games of yesteryear. What he does on this album, though, is a bit different. Although he programmed his arrangements of the classic NES pieces in chiptune, he also adds a radically different sound – jazz piano. It’s super intelligent stuff, musically. It’s one musician duetting with himself, with one side being meticulously programmed down to the smallest rhythm and pitch-bend and the other played with all of the subtlety and expression one might expect from a live performance.

It’s not just a chiptune backing track with a piano playing over the top, either. The melodies twist around and intertwine and neither sound gets in the way of the other. It really does sound like a human and an original-generation NES getting together at a jazz club for a musical meeting of minds. It sounds really stupid to say, but it’s really easy to forget that there is just one person creating all the sounds here and that, of course, it’s nowhere near live.

I want to highlight one track in particular that first introduced me to this album, and it still wows me every time. It’s a version of ‘Gemini Man’ from the game Mega Man 3; you can hear the original piece here for comparison. Where the original was a lightly funky and slightly rocky tune, Shnabubula turns it into an out-and-out piece of red-hot Latin jazz that provides ample opportunity for some brilliant piano improvisations. This is a track that I play over and over, just to marvel at the precision of the musical architecture at play.

I really love the aesthetic of chiptune, and (from what I’ve heard, at least) it’s been incredibly underused as a vehicle for jazz. Shnabubula marries the two excellently on NES Jams. More of this please!

052: Ecstatic Music from Sri Lanka, by Baliphonics

Baliphonics (Sri Lanka/New Zealand)
Ecstatic Music from Sri Lanka (2018)
8 tracks, 26 minutes
Listen on the Baliphonics website

This is actually a group that have been on my radar for quite a few years. They caught my eye simply because it’s not every day you hear Sri Lankan music (if you’re me, anyway), and they kept that attention through their mix of traditional drumming and jazz, as well as what appears to be (although I’m definitely no expert!) a modern take on traditional dances…including dancing with fire, which is always exciting. The concept of Baliphonics has been around for about ten years, inspired by Sumudi Suraweera’s study into the music of the bali ritual while working towards his doctorate in ethnomusicology in New Zealand. That ritual aims to heal through warding off the evil intentions of planetary gods, so it’s not a music to take lightly. Baliphonics hold onto that seriousness despite their innovation.

With Sumudi on drum kit, the traditional styles are brought to the table by Prasanna Rupathilaka on yak bera drum and Susantha Rupathilaka dancing, and both sing. When I first heard the band, the jazz used to come from a solo double bass, but now it’s the task of Reuben Derrick on clarinets big and small to provide a never-too-intrusive avant-garde sound bed for the drums and voice. I think the musical input of Sumudi himself is what makes this such a successful fusion of styles. He’s a trained jazz drummer, but his academic explorations into the traditional Sri Lankan styles have allowed him to adapt his kit playing to nicely complement both sides of his band’s sound.

Although Baliphonics have played quite a bit throughout New Zealand, Sri Lanka and everywhere in between (namely, South-East Asia) over the past ten years, they only just made it over to Europe with a couple of gigs in Poland in December. They don’t even have an official album out yet, but they have put up a bunch of tracks recorded live in 2018 on their website, which is enough to class as a Good Album in my eyes. I really hope they come a little closer to the UK soon, so that I can see them live and keep writing about them! Keep a look out for these lot, they deserve to go places.

051: Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Somalia)
Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa (2017)
16 tracks, 86 minutes (LP version)
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Here’s an album that I reviewed not too long ago for Songlines magazine (you can read that on my other blog); it only came out a couple of years ago, after all. I will try my best to find different things to say!

When I first heard about the existence of this album, I admit that I was a little put out. I’d been interested Somali music since I did my undergraduate in music, starting back in 2011. I loved the music for starters, how the use of pentatonic scales and florid vocal ornaments give it a unique flavour and sonically position it precisely in its geographical home in the Horn of Africa, right next to the Arabic peninsula. But there was an intrigue to it too: how could such a range of music have been almost completely ignored within the international music scene? So I held my little idea of maybe delving into the Somali music scene and bringing it to wider attention in Europe. But then this album came along.

Of course, Ostinato Records did a much better job than I could have done, to the point that this album was nominated for a Grammy. Now there’s Somali music being brought to wider attention. The story behind the album is undoubtedly compelling: the tracks having been sourced mostly from the Red Sea Foundation, who had collected (and sometimes even literally dug up) 10,000 tapes that had been hidden by Radio Hargeisa and others to save them from the Somali civil war. But what attracts me most is, as usual, the music.

This compilation brings together pop music by Somalis from across the Horn of Africa from the 60s to the 2000s. As seems to be the case quite often with this sort of compilation, the music skews to the funky – I guess the ‘rare groove’ label probably covers it the best. So there’s funk, there’s reggae, there’s disco, Bollywood music, rock’n’roll and soul in there too in varying amounts depending on the artist, but no matter what other outside influences are laid upon the tracks, the music always retains that strong Somali identity, those same ornaments, the same scales and the same distinctively Somali way of rhyming their poetry. There’s also liberal amounts of sorta-dodgy retro synths and Hammond organs; truly, this album is playing to my weaknesses.

I didn’t get to make that album of Somali music that opened international ears to these wonderful sounds, but I’m glad Ostinato Records did, and did it well. At least I can still set my sights on making that album of Chadian music that I've had on my mind at some point…oh wait a minute, they’re already working on it. Well.

050: Two of the Few, by Oscar Peterson and Milt Jackson

Oscar Peterson and Milt Jackson (Canada/USA)
Two of the Few (1983)
8 tracks, 46 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

The name of this album is apt. It’s a meeting of two of the most scintillating jazz musicians of their time, for my money: Oscar Peterson on piano and Milt Jackson, ‘Bags,’ on vibraphone. And it really is just two, there’s no rhythm section here, and there doesn’t need to be. Peterson’s syncopated stride-ish style means that all the bases are covered. It’s actually striking when you realise that, oh yeah, this is just piano and vibes. Or sometimes that it’s just piano solo. He gets so much out of it. There’s no need for anyone else because they’ve got it all, and because there’s only two of them, the sound is so pure, with nothing extraneous whatsoever.

Although the album is obviously full of lovely duets, the reason I wanted to talk about this one in particular is the very last piece, the almost-title track ‘Here’s Two of the Few.’ It is absolutely exquisite. It’s quite a simple, slow 12-bar blues written by Jackson, and it really allows both players to demonstrate their skills in a completely relaxed setting. There’s no fireworks, just 100% assured-yet-playful mastery. The opening solo by Bags is so perfect and wraps up so neatly and pleasingly that every time I hear it I want to burst into applause. If there was an audience on the track, they’d have lost it. But as it is, there’s not, and so it feels like that solo is played directly just for me. For that feeling to be so palpable nearly 40 years after it was recorded shows some mad genius. And then OP comes in with his own solo and it’s just all so right. What a track.

Sometimes when you get a room full of the brightest minds in their sphere and get them to make art together, the results can fall strangely flat. But get two to meet on an equal footing in this way, and they can create pure magic. Even though it was recorded quite some time after post-bop’s heyday, Two of the Few is nevertheless one of the best.

049: Le Koto de Hiromu Handa, by Hiromu Handa

Hiromu Handa (Japan)
Le Koto de Hiromu Handa (1977)
10 tracks, 39 minutes
YouTube playlist · iTunes

A while back I was asked by Songlines Magazine to contribute an entry for an article called ‘The Greatest Albums You’ve Never Heard,’ basically a collection of near-criminally unknown or underrated albums in world music. Although I eventually wrote about a different one, this album was one of the three that immediately jumped to mind.

I’d not heard of it before I saw it on the Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya (an excellent but now sadly defunct music blog with old recordings from everywhere – in fact, you may still be able to download this album from there, I think), and in fact, I’ve not heard the artist discussed anywhere since, either. So, as you might expect, this is quite a mysterious one. I know little about them or this album in particular, but I know how it sounds and how it makes me feel. It is so evocative. When I listen, I’m transported to a world of contemplation, a tranquil lake surrounded by blossoming cherry trees in a rural Japan that has probably never existed in the romanticised way my brain has created.

Much like Toumani Diabaté and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, who we’ve covered in the past, Hiromu Handa is much more than a master of his instrument. He plays the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese bridge-zither plucked with plectrums attached to the fingers, but his technique is unlike any other. He developed new ways of playing the instrument and even penned treatises to that effect. The way that Handa plays, with rapid melodies, chords, arpeggios, sweeping glissandi and even tapping rhythms on the strings – sometimes all at the same time – is avant garde in the world of Japanese classical tradition, yet it loses none of the music’s poignancy, subtlety, or even spaciousness. It never feels crowded or overdone. His pitch bends and minute vibratos are absolutely perfect. The result here is a completely solo album that pushes all boundaries while keeping the spirit of the traditional style at the very core of the performance.

As far as I can tell there is only one other album by Hiromu Handa, oddly enough with the exact same name as this one. I would love to get my hands on it and there is currently a copy going on Discogs, although it’s a little too expensive for me. If you like what you’ve been reading on this blog and would like to donate an album…well, here’s the link.

048: Yellow Submarine, by The Beatles and George Martin

The Beatles and George Martin (United Kingdom)
Yellow Submarine (1969)
13 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Like the Rage Against the Machine album last month, Yellow Submarine was a contractual obligation dun good. The Beatles had signed a three-film contract, but after A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, they figured that an animated film would be the easiest way to fulfil their contract with minimal input on their part. They licensed some of their well-known songs from recent years and chucked in a handful of originals that were deemed not good enough to put on any albums. The film company hired a bunch of actors to play the fabulous foursome, and that was that. In the end, though, with its distinctive surreal and psychedelic art style and its charming and silly plot, the film turned out to be a classic, and hugely influential in its way.

And with the film came the obligatory soundtrack album, featuring all of the film’s original songs as well as the title track. But that’s not all it included. It’s officially credited to The Beatles, of course, but I feel like that diminishes too much the contributions of producer George Martin: the whole of Side B is made up of the orchestral score of the film, which was written by Martin himself. These pieces present a much different flavour than you’d normally get on a Beatles album: they are heavily rooted in classical sounds, from Stravinsky to the scores of golden age Hollywood. Martin keeps the Beatles very present in the music, though. He worked so closely with them as to understand their artistry perfectly, and so their sound is evoked often in the orchestra, even without any direct musical quotes (well, not many). The piece ‘The Sea of Time’ even shows Martin getting into the spirit of the other George’s Indian adventures.

Back to the Beatles themselves. Remember that the original songs on the film were already written, but weren’t considered good enough for an ‘official’ album release? It’s madness, really, when you look at some of the songs discarded into Yellow Submarine. ‘Hey Bulldog’ is, in my opinion, one of the best Beatles songs ever, it rocks so hard! It starts with the meanest piano riff, which is then joined by acidic guitar and machine-gun snare; already four bars in, you’ve lost me. It’s too late, I’m already fist pumping and howling at the moon. And then you remember that the other original songs include ‘Only a Northern Song’ and the perfect kid’s song ‘All Together Now’…the quality of the ‘second tier’ songs that are included on this album just go to show the utmost quality of the rest of the Beatles’ work.

047: Sound of the Sitar, by Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar (India)
Sound of the Sitar (1965)
4 tracks, 41 minutes
YouTube · Spotify · iTunes

We’ve had quite a few albums from India already so far – from brass band music to acid house-ish stuff, and from Indian-inspired Hollywood soundtracks to Bollywood originals just the other day. Now we move onto the first album of hardcore Hindustani classical music from one of the most revered – and certainly the most internationally renowned – musicians of his style.

As well as becoming somewhat of a household name for bringing the sound of the sitar to the West through his performances in the US in the 1960s and 70s, Pandit Ravi Shankar also has a special place in my own personal musical memory. Although I’ve been attending festivals since I was a little baby, the first real concert I ever attended was by Ravi and Anoushka Shankar at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. I was almost 14, we were just seven rows from the stage, me, my dad and our mate Hoghead, witnessing an utterly spellbinding evening of sight, sound and smell. Now there’s a formative moment.

Sound of the Sitar was originally released in 1965, although it’s now easier to find the remastered edition that was released as part of ‘The Ravi Shankar Collection’ in 2000. [Sidebar: the original cover, which I’ve tried to use here, is a really beautiful painting, it’s a shame that the remaster crammed it into a little corner of the cover.] The reason I chose this album in particular is because it shows why Ravi was so respected at the time – this was pre-Beatles collabs and pre-Monterey – both within India and, increasingly, to a Western audience to whom this music and these instruments were entirely new and undoubtedly mindblowing.

The first half of the album is my favourite: a 20-minute unaccompanied rendition of Raga Malkauns, starting with the slow, almost-unmetred alap section before moving onto a faster, more rhythmic jor. Malkauns is a night-time raga, so listen to it between midnight and 3am for maximum tingles. Ravi definitely helped solidify the bluesy Malkauns as one of my favourite ragas. The second half of the album introduces Ravi’s long-time collaborator and master tabla player, Ustad Alla Rakha, with a seven-and-a-bit minute solo in Sawari tala before the two play a piece based on a folk melody, ‘Pahari Dhun.’ For me, the album is defined by that opening piece – it’s actually one of my favourite recordings of Indian classical music of all. With all of the reputation that Ravi Shankar gained for his ties to the hippie movement and his more experimental repertoire later on, it’s satisfying to hear a recording before most of that, and to appreciate the work of a true master.

045: Bajofondo Tango Club, by Bajofondo Tango Club

Bajofondo Tango Club (Argentina/Uruguay)
Bajofondo Tango Club (2002)
14 tracks, 69 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

This is a hard album to categorise. It’s called Bajofondo Tango Club, yep, and it’s by…a band called Bajofondo Tango Club? Well, not really a band, at this point it was just the production duo of Gustavo Santaolalla and Juan Campodónico. So, various artists, remixed? Ah, I dunno. Let's just get on with it.

Tango is such an evocative genre – listening to tango gives such a strong sense of place and atmosphere and even emotion. It’s an urban music that grew up in the slums and taverns around the River Plate basin but its mix of African and indigenous South American styles with dances from all over Europe and even some classical music just screams sophistication.

Bajofondo’s music – of this era, at least – is tango through and through. Santaolalla and Campodónico based this album on classic tango pieces, even using samples of tango masters of yesteryear with their gut-wrenching vocals as well as their pianos, violins and of course the quintessential sound of tango, the bandoneón squeezebox. But that’s not really what makes the album tango. After all, the duo mix so many other influences, cultures and styles – you could just as easily describe the music as electronica, acid jazz, trip-hop or even occasionally instrumental hip-hop. It’s that atmosphere, though, that emotion and sense of place all remains exactly the same as any other tango, not to mention that it is just as sophisticated as any Piazzola piece. This album is so classy, I want to be drinking cocktails in an upmarket, tastefully neon, early 2000s bar-lounge. It’s also one of those great albums that can serve either as dance music (it’s tango, come on) or as a chill-out soundtrack equally well.

With Bajofondo Tango Club, and together with the Gotan Project from France, Santaolalla and Campodónico proved themselves at the vanguard of the new genre of electrotango, which itself fuelled a mini sort of tango boom around the world. If nothing else, we learn that bandoneón and synthesiser go together so well – in Bajofondo’s hands at least.

045: Palm Wine Guitar Music: the 60's Sound, by S.E. Rogie

S.E. Rogie (Sierra Leone)
Palm Wine Guitar Music: the 60's Sound (1988)
12 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify (not in UK) · YouTube

Listening to palm wine music for the first time, it could be quite hard to pin on the map. Depending on who’s playing it, it has sounds from Trinidad, the US, Cuba, the Congo, Ghana or the UK. The world-spanning nature makes sense when you consider that it was the sound of the ports of Liberia and Sierra Leone, invented by sailors and dock workers who blended all the music they heard on their travels or were taught by passing-through foreigners, mixed with the traditional music of the region and played on guitars and beer bottle percussion (it was booze music, after all).

One of the stars of palm wine was Sooliman Ernest Rogers, better known as S.E. Rogie, and this compilation gives a nice succinct guide to his swingingest period. S.E. Rogie’s warm, deep voice and lovely finger-picking guitar gave him the ability to adapt palm wine to whatever he wanted it to be: he could use it to impart sage advice, have a good laugh or just make you rock around the joint. It worked stylistically too, because depending on what piece you listen to, it could be calypso or surf rock, highlife or jive. In fact, my favourite tracks on this compilation are ‘I Wish I Was a Cowboy’ and ‘A Time in My Life’ – as you can tell from the former's title, these are straight-up country songs. Sing them with a slightly different accent and they could be direct from Tennessee.

There’s just something about his music that is so sweet and cheerful, which is understandable when the songs are on partying, drinking and how in love you are (happy Valentine’s Day!), but quite a feat when the song is as unrelentingly bleak as ‘A Time in My Life,’ where he talks about a series of increasingly bad circumstances before contemplating suicide. But he manages it! Maybe it’s because the residue of palm wine alcohol is so firmly embedded in the wax that you’ll just end up grinning along through thick and thin.

Later in his life, Rogie also released an album on Real World Records, Dead Men Don’t Smoke Marijuana, which included guest musicians such as Danny Thompson on bass. It’s quite good, but it is definitely the album of an older gentleman, and doesn’t really have the same energy as this one. If you want to hear S.E. Rogie in his prime, twisting and crooning with the best of them (and recorded for a local audience, too), Palm Wine Guitar Music: the 60’s Sound is the one to go for.

044: Awāra/Shree 420, by Shankar Jaikishan

Shankar Jaikishan (India)
Awāra/Shree 420 (1951/1955)
18 tracks, 72 minutes
I’m including this here as one album, because that’s the form I have it in. You can download the same songs-only compilation from iTunes or listen to the two complete soundtracks separately on Spotify: Awāra · Shree 420

This is a really good album to serve as a comparison to yesterday’s. They're both film soundtracks mixing Western and Indian classical themes with all the associated instruments and orchestras thereof, but here it comes from the other direction – direct from Bollywood! This album compiles all the songs from two classics from the golden age of Bollywood film: Awāra, from 1951, and Shree 420, from 1955. Both films were directed by and starred the legendary Raj Kapoor, and the music and songs on both were composed by the duo Shankar Jaikishan.

Now, Bollywood music isn’t really my thing, usually – the songs are usually completely melodramatic, incredibly cheesy and I usually find it hard to listen to the shrill timbres of the strings and female vocals. These two soundtracks are exceptions though. What originally drew me to these in particular were two songs that remain my favourites of the set. They’re both sung by Mukesh, and both are super catchy – and they’re actually two of the most famous songs from this era of Bollywood. I guess I’m quite basic. ‘Awāra Hoon’ is about the nobility of the vagabond; ‘Mera Joota Hai Japani’ is a more upbeat piece, patriotic and has a chorus that will stick in your head forever: “Mera joota hai Japani / Ye patloon Inglistani / Sar pe laal ṭopi Rusi / Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani” (and if you don’t understand Hindi-Urdu, that is: “My shoes are Japanese / These trousers are English / The red cap on my head is Russian / But still my heart is Indian”).

But, working in exactly the way these things should, these two pieces led me on to listen to the rest of the soundtracks, which are lovely all the way through. Even the voice of Lata Mangeshkar – the Bollywood playback icon and possibly the most recorded singer in history – doesn’t rub me up the wrong way as it usually does, perhaps because her particular vocal style had not yet become the basis of a million pastiches, nor become a parody of itself. In fact, it is her voice that leads my other favourites from the album, the pair of ‘Tere Bina Aag Yeh Chandni’ and ‘Ghar Aya Mere Pardesi.’ The two songs mix Indian classical music with disconcerting horror film music, wailing clarinets and slide guitars as well as something that sounds a little Russian, a bit of French and a good dose of sultriness. All sorts!

This album, and the soundtracks it contains, really make it stand out to me how easy it is to write off huge swathes of music that might contain bits and pieces that you’ll absolutely love. As I said, I’m not usually into Bollywood music, but then I heard a track or two that I really dug, and they dragged me further in and presented new and interesting listens. Never be afraid to listen a little bit wider, then!

043: The Man Who Would Be King OST, by Maurice Jarre

Maurice Jarre (France)
The Man Who Would Be King OST (1975)
10 tracks, 30 minutes
Listen on YouTube

The Man Who Would Be King is a 1975 film based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling. Starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine and set in the 19th century, it follows two British officers adventuring around India and Afghanistan, until one of them becomes revered as a god-king in the city of Sikandergul. It’s a classic tale of hubris punished, with more than a dash of colonialism and orientalism.

The soundtrack, composed by Maurice Jarre, is quite a mix between Western classical music, British folk and military music and Hindustani music, and features a brass-heavy orchestra and heavy use of Indian instruments such as the sarangi, sarod, surbahar and shehnai and even some slightly misplaced Tibetan horns. As is common for film music, a lot of the material is based on a few short motifs that are developed and varied throughout the film. A neat touch for The Man Who Would Be King, though, is that the most prominent motif is lifted in its entirety from the melody of the old Irish song ‘Minstrel Boy’ – a song which becomes important to the plot near the end of the film. By that point, the theme has come around so many times in so many different ways, we already know every note of it.

What I enjoy the most in this soundtrack is its very particular combination of Western and Indian classical musics that really evokes, for me, the 18th and 19th century interest that Western composers had in South Asian music. It’s heard most clearly when the Indian instruments are not playing, but where the North Indian melodic and rhythmic elements are transposed into the setting of the Western orchestra. I’m not sure whether this was Jarre’s intention or not, but I think it really captures that spirit of orientalist composition of the time: it’s rather clumsy and made without the depth of knowledge required for sensitive fusion (or at least composed specifically to sound that way). It’s that lack of sensitivity that makes this style rare today, but from a purely musical standpoint, it creates a sound that is very much rooted in time and place, and all the more evocative for it.

042: The Route, by Art Pepper and Chet Baker

Art Pepper and Chet Baker (USA)
The Route (1989)
11 tracks, 53 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Chet Baker isn’t too well-regarded in the world of jazz, as far as my experiences tell me. Even when he is recognised, it’s often his earnest and naïve vocal style that receives the lion’s share of people’s attention, but I think it’s a shame to forget his chops as a trumpeter, which can clearly be heard on this album. Maybe he couldn’t compete with Miles or Lee Morgan, but there’s no doubt that he holds his own alongside the wonderful altoist Art Pepper on this record.

It’s quite an easy listen – it doesn’t contain the technical intensity of the slightly later hard-bop and so doesn’t require that same intensity of listening. It’s still a progression from classic bebop but without pushing towards free jazz or ultra-modality, and also without too many ballads which tend to bog me down. That doesn’t take anything away from it, though, you don’t want to have a furrowed brow every single time you listen to jazz. Instead, it’s mostly quite jolly and light-hearted without lacking any of the cool. Just think of it as listening on easy mode.

This album is technically a compilation, although it holds a stronger claim to albumhood than most. All eleven tracks were recorded in one session but never released as a whole album, instead scattered throughout various compilations around the time, or else never being released at all. So from being recorded in one day in July 1956, it actually took until 1989 to actually be released as an album, perhaps as a cash-in on Baker’s death a year earlier (and Art’s wasn’t that long ago, either). Whether this release really was so cynical or whether that’s just me, it’s good that it exists; a record of a hot one-day session and a meeting between two greats still in the beginnings of their careers.

041: The Doors, by The Doors

The Doors (USA)
The Doors (1967)
11 tracks, 44 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

The Doors made so many great albums in their time, but their eponymous debut album from 1967 is just so well-rounded and exciting, it’s that one that gets the inclusion here. I seem to say this quite a bit – I guess that’s one of the perils of only talking about Good Albums – but almost every track on The Doors is a winner. Almost.

‘Soul Kitchen,’ ‘20th Century Fox’ and ‘I Looked at You’ hint at the burgeoning psychedelic rock movement while losing none of the rock’n’roll power behind them. ‘Light My Fire’ gave the group their first #1 single, and remains an enduring classic (even if it’s not my favourite track of the album). The easily overlooked ‘Take It as It Comes’ is near the end of the album, but still provides a wonderfully dark and Latin-esque groove which allows for some interesting solos. The two covers that the band chose to include show that they’re in no way bashful about the roots of their music: ‘Back Door Man,’ written by Willie Dixon for Howlin’ Wolf is as pure a blues as you’d expect; ‘Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)’ from a Bertold Brecht/Kurt Weill operetta is perfect for the theatricality of Jim Morrison’s performance.

But the stand-out is the opening track, ‘Break on Through (To the Other Side).’ It’s just a distillation of everything that makes the album itself great. Killer guitar riffs, bluesy melody, a proto-prog organ solo and lyrics simple enough to stay with you long after the track’s finished. It’s one of those tracks that sound so completely fresh and electrifying even though it was recorded more than 50 years ago.

Okay, as I alluded to, it’s not an out-and-out perfect album. ‘The End’ is one of the most recognisable tracks on the album, but it is a bit of a glimpse of the wankiness that Jim Morrison was capable of – full of that faux-depth and self-conscious edginess that make you think he was probably a right twat to be around. But, like The Doors in general, his artistry was mostly on-point, especially when restrained by the rest of the band.

Overall, it’s an interesting album this, because I think you can hear how much of an influence it had on both punk and prog to come. It’s as if the album was the progenitor to two completely opposed artistic movements. But most of all, it’s just an absolute cracker all on its own, right from the beginning if maybe not all the way to ‘The End.’

040: Ten Thousand, by the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir

Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir (Canada)
Ten Thousand (2008)
14 tracks, 44 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

This blog is already coming up trumps – I know I love this album, but it must be about seven or eight years since I’ve given it a listen. Now I get to love it all over again!

The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir are not what they tell you they are – they’re actually a quartet from Calgary whose style feels like it’s dredged up from the time when there was no difference between country music and the blues. I’m not sure about their religious beliefs though, so there is that. But what’s in a name?

There’s a lot of twanging going on on this one. The sound is centred around the combination of banjo and acoustic guitar and everything fits in around those: the double bass is flabby in exactly the right way, the kick drum is very loose and boomy while the rest of the drum kit is bolstered by what sounds like the contents of a kitchen. It all suits the gruff voice of Judd Palmer and the high-n-scratchy voice of Bob Keelaghan to a T. Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits are immediate frames of reference, and in fact, they are mentioned in basically every review of them – so much so that the comparison seems dull, not to mention reductive. There’s much less of the jazz or rock here, but there are bluegrass, zydeco and even Tuareg influences. The cartoon of Son House on the cover lets you know what to expect – it’s not pretty, but it’ll get you stomping.

This album is crammed with great tracks, and catchy ones too. ‘Nehemiah’s Misfortune,’ ‘Life is Wrong,’ ‘Dumb It Down,’ the Son House-penned title track ’10,000 Years’ and the insightful opener ‘Go Back Home’ (spoiler: you can’t do that. Thomas Wolfe, innit) will all get you hollering along with the choruses even before they’ve drawn to a close.

Ten Thousand came at the perfect time in the UK. 2008 was in the middle of a bit of a blues boom, with listeners rejecting ultra-polished blues-rock for a grittier sound that looked back at its earlier roots to meld with modern sensibilities. It was the same sort of time that brought popularity to Seasick Steve, Son of Dave and C.W. Stoneking, and the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir fit well in that scene. It’s a shame that this album turned out to be the last of their three. The group did a couple of UK tours but eventually went on their separate ways, onto puppet theatres and film soundtracks. But then, three great albums (such as AMGC have) is a good run, and don’t they always say to quit while you’re ahead? They didn’t release any duffers this way, and we still have a load of great music of theirs to enjoy – and to rediscover after all this time! Still, if they ever decided to reform and do more tours over here, I would not say no…

039: Codex, by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (Iran)
Codex (2013)
5 tracks, 45 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is one man with a drum, although you wouldn’t know it. Born in Iran and a long-time resident of Berlin, Germany, he has mastered the tombak goblet drum and the large daf frame drum. Actually, not just mastered, he’s completely changed how the drums can be played. Mortazavi has created at least 30 new ways in which to coax different sounds out of them with just his nimble fingers. This is beyond virtuosic – this is revolutionary.

Codex is a 45-minute unbroken performance created entirely with the tombak. It’s recorded without loops, without overdubs, and without any sort of studio trickery save the smallest hint of reverb. One man with a drum. The sounds he gets out of it are unreal. It can be trickling water one moment, and cellos or xylophones the next. Sometimes there’s even a dubstep thing going on, wobbly bass and all, all without breaking the beat. And it’s never one thing at a time – he gets all of these sounds and rhythms going on top of each other. It really makes you wonder how many fingers that guy actually has, let alone the brainspace to hold it all in.

It puts me in mind a little bit of the Laraaji album I covered, in the way that it is made up of endless changing patterns that draw you in, get all the way inside your head and leave you completely mesmerised. At one point, my brain was even telling me there were voices coming out of the reverb, but it’s all a trick being played by the overtones of the tombak’s single goatskin.

Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s skills have to be seen to be believed, and even then, you’ll probably not. This album is a good place to start wrapping your head around it, though.

038: Souvenance, by Anouar Brahem

Anouar Brahem (Tunisia)
Souvenance (2015)
11 tracks, 89 minutes (2CD)
Spotify · iTunes

This is the first time on this blog that I’m featuring an album that I’ve previously reviewed. I reckoned it would be interesting to compare how I felt about the album after just one or two listens with how I feel now, often a few years later. I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, I’d like these to work more in conjunction with my previous work than to trump them.

I reviewed this one back in 2015 for fRoots Magazine – you can read that one over on my other blog. I remember at the time, this album came to me after a long run of various Arabic jazz albums. Some were good, some less so, but I definitely needed a break, so I ended up putting this one off for a while; North African oud in a jazz style? Heard it, mate. But the fact that this was an ECM record should have let me know that this was going to have a special something to it. In fact, I would hesitate to say whether ‘jazz’ would even be an accurate descriptor.

In the endless debate over the proper way to call, talk about and define ‘classical music,’ a term that often crops up is ‘serious music.’ It’s not really the best suggestion, because there are so many examples on the contrary, but it most definitely fits this album. It is straight-faced art of the highest order. Souvenance is a work that demands to be at the centre of your attention; stick it on in the background and it may just sound wishy-washy and without any real movement. But it’s all there for the focused ear.

There are lots of gentle timbres over this album – oud, piano, bass, bass clarinet and string orchestra – but like waves, there is an immense power behind the gentle stirrings that occasionally break dramatically before returning to its previous calm, as themes return or overlap, or fade and morph into something not-quite recognisable. The Western classical instrumentation and compositional style gives the album its overall sound, but it is informed by the Arabic, North African and jazz of its composer’s roots, providing a similarly oceanic depth to the work. Enjoy this album in solemnity and wonder at its immensity.

For the London-based of you, Anouar Brahem will be playing at the Barbican on the 15th March. It’ll probably be a bit more jazzy than this album, as he’s playing alongside the legendary musicians Django Bates, Dave Holland and Nasheet Waits – that’s a line-up to make your mouth water. I’m hoping I can be there myself, so maybe see you there!

037: Come Out, by Roughcut

Roughcut feat. Sesco D. (Germany)
Come Out (1996)
13 tracks, 51 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to stream this. AllMusic comes closest (you can play previews of all the tracks) and you can buy the CD second-hand for cheap on Discogs. Alternatively, hit me up and I’ll sort you out.

This will be an interesting one to write, because I know basically nothing about the band Roughcut, or this album. Did they have any more albums? Did their members go on to do other things? No idea, and the internet doesn’t help much either. The group themselves appear to be from Germany, and it sounds like the featured vocalist, Sesco D., has released some reggae albums under the name Jah Sesco, but that’s as much as I can find. All very mysterious.

What I can tell you about is the music itself. The mid-1990s were the boom time for world dubtronica – that mix of electronica and dub with influences and samples from all sorts of music from all over the world pioneered by groups such as Transglobal Underground and Suns of Arqa. Come Out…uh, came out right in the middle of that, and it’s a great example of it. There’s lots of influence from Indian music all over the album, from tabla and sarangi samples to vaguely ethnic-sounding melodic noodling, but there’s also bits of jungle or Bulgarian singing or African drumming here and there. It’s all held together by dark techno synths and beats, chest-rattling dub bass and Sesco D.’s everpresent ragga-ish vocals.

It sounds a little dated nowadays, because it is. Its mid-90s origins are obvious, but listen in the right ambience and it’s a gas – early morning near the end of a party, you can take what you want from it: pump it loud and you can keep dancing till the sun’s back up; play it nice and low, and even the faster, more beat-heavy tracks can be strangely soothing.

This album – and Roughcut in general – is an interesting but basically unknown artefact of a scene right at the beginning of its heyday. If you can track it down, the music speaks for itself – which is good, because nothing else does. I’d love to learn more about this, so please get in touch if you’re in the know!

036: Reet Petite and Gone: 22 Original Classics, by Louis Jordan

Louis Jordan (USA)
Reet Petite and Gone: 22 Original Classics (1999)
22 tracks, 63 minutes
Spotify playlist · Bear Family Records

This album is a proper obscure one, basically because it’s just a bargain bucket compilation from 20 years ago, but I still think it’s the best Louis Jordan compilation I’ve heard – and I’ve heard quite a few – so I’m including it here anyway, and I’ve taken the time to actually recreate it in the form of a Spotify playlist so you can listen as intended – aren’t you lucky?

I’ve mentioned before how I reckon I can pinpoint Miles’ Bitches Brew as the start of my obsession with jazz, but Louis Jordan definitely played his part, and at a much younger age for me too. I’m a bit hazy about it, but I’m sure that he was one of the first artists whose music I actually owned (a title he holds alongside other such luminaries as Björk and S Club 7). It was a hand-me-down cassette from my dad, and that was a typically good call from him: Jordan is a great introduction to jazz and blues for younger kids. It’s really good fun to dance around to, the melodies are exciting but hummable and the lyrics are easily memorable and crammed with witty (and/or crude) jokes, even if I didn’t get at least 50% of them back in primary school. Plus, I loved trains, so it was ‘Choo Choo Ch’Boogie’ that got my attention in the first place.

That cassette had a different tracklist to this album, but there’s still quite a bit of cross-over, although this one misses out some classics – ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ was another favourite of Little Jim and an unfortunate omission from this collection, together with ‘Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby’ and ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry.’ Never mind though, it’s full of classics that really show off what Jordan was about. His style of jump jive is at the exact midpoint between two popular styles at the time: jazzier than R’n’B, bluesier than swing to make the perfect pop music of its day. It was a style he perfected and it was perfect for him. He was a singer, a saxophonist, a composer, a lyricist, a bandleader and a comedian – and he was amazing at all of them. It’s not fair really, is it? Telling jokes to blowing a mean solo to crooning a heartfelt ballad…he could do it all and in quick succession. I’m sure a concert by Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five must have been a cracking night out.

Parents, take the heed of Abu Djimm: Louis Jordan is a gateway drug to the crazy worlds of jazz and blues – get it in their ears early.

035: Moving in the Dark, by Dizraeli and the Small Gods

Dizraeli and the Small Gods (United Kingdom)
Moving in the Dark (2013)
15 tracks, 60 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

If I’ve known you for any length of time, you’ll have heard me extolling the virtues of Dizraeli. He’s a poet/rapper/performance artist and I honestly believe he is a genius of our time, for the things he thinks and the way he thinks them. Moving in the Dark is the only album Dizraeli made with his group the Small Gods. Together, they were an amazing ensemble, one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live. They’re eight-strong on this album, and the line-up is top-class; I’m just going to stick the personnel list here:

• Dizraeli: vocals, melodica, guitar, sound design
• Cate Ferris: vocals, flute, piano
• Jules Arthur: keys, vocals, viola, noises of all descriptions
• Lee Westwood: guitar, vocals, hammered dulcimer
• DJ Downlow: turntables, vocals, sound design
• Bellatrix: double bass, vocals, beatbox
• Nathan Feddo: double bass, electric bass
• Paul Gregory: drums

They’re all amazing musicians with a whole web of solo and collaborative projects between and amongst them, I really urge you to check them out if you wanna hear a wide-ranging bunch of tasty sounds. Back to the task at hand though…

With an octet of top musicians with backgrounds and interests in all manner of styles, this was never going to be a straight hip-hop album. It’s a little bit of a move away from the heavy folk influences that worked so well on Diz’s previous album, although there are still traces. Instead there is a much heavier influence from contemporary jazz (which itself takes cues from hip-hop…) and modern art music. The title track is a great example of this: the strange chord changes are disorienting as it is, but there’s also a really cool bit of rhythming in the chorus, with some parts playing four bars of 4/4 and some playing four of 3/4 and one of 4/4…they’re all playing 16 beats at the same time, but those contrasting accents throw everything gloriously off-kilter.

As the title suggests, there’s a lot of darkness on this album and some of it is quite creepy. It’s never not compelling though; just look at ‘There is a Way.’ It’s a beautiful and atmospheric folkish song with bagpipes, but it’s saturated with sadness and reeks of urban loneliness. And when you need them the most, there are jewels of hope that shine in the bleak: ‘The Little Things’ is a touching tribute to friends and lovers with sage advice from a Nanna, and ‘Never Mind’ is a slightly-Latin, slightly-dubby, slightly-ska reminder to bounce around as much as possible, because if you don’t, what’s the point? I mean, the chorus doesn’t quite work properly if you’ve got a northern accent like mine, but let’s forgive Dizraeli that. He is one of our most important and under-appreciated artists of the now, after all.

[Also, just this last Saturday, the BBC World Service broadcast a documentary presented by Dizraeli, called The Politics of Mongolian Hip-Hop. So if you want to get to grips with the scene in Ulaanbaatar, you can listen again now.]

034: Reefer Madness: A Collection of Vintage Drug Songs, 1927-1945, by Various Artists

Various Artists (USA)
Reefer Madness: A Collection of Vintage Drug Songs, 1927-1945 (2006)
18 tracks, 54 minutes
YouTube playlist · Spotify (only a handful of tracks available in the UK) · iTunes

Not to be confused with the so-bad-it’s-good anti-pot propaganda film from 1936 (you can watch it in its entirety on YouTube)…or, for that matter, at least one other compilation of drug-related early-20th century music that’s also called Reefer Madness. This one is a budget compilation on the Buzzola record label of the sort that you’ll see bins full going for £3 down in Camden Market or wherever.

It’s actually a cracking collection of songs that take a look at the more hedonistic side of early jazz and blues, one that is perhaps overshadowed in comparison with the exploits of the 50s and 60s scenes. There’s some big names featured on this album including Ella Fitzgerald, Leadbelly, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith and Cab Calloway (‘Minnie the Moocher’ is probably the best-known piece here) as well as lesser-known musicians, and there’s also a pleasing number of female artists included too, whose contributions to the scene (particularly its more bawdy elements) are often unfairly ignored.

There’s catchy tunes, excellent solos and wicked humour all over this – every track is a winner; it probably helps that the compilers had so many out-of-copyright gems to choose from. It means that it’s hard to pick a highlight (‘Dope Head Blues’ by Victoria Spivey, ‘Reefer Man’ by Don Redman and ‘Knockin’ Myself Out’ by Lil Green are definitely up there), but the one that I keep coming back to is ‘Here Comes the Man with the Jive’ by singer and violinist Stuff Smith. Not only is it a bit of a novelty to have a solo violin in that era of jazz-blues, it’s also just all-over cool: cool tune, cool rhythm, lyrics, lingo, solos, everything. He’s an artist that I’ve never really got around to exploring, which is a shame, but if this track is anything to go off, there’s a treasure trove waiting out there.

And speaking of treasure troves, price is not an absolute indication of quality – get stuck into those £3 bins in Camden Market!

033: Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Original Sound Version, by Alexander Brandon

Alexander Brandon (USA)
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Original Sound Version (1998)
17 tracks, 67 minutes
Listen and download at KHInsider

What is the complete opposite of yesterday’s all-acoustic album of solemn, religious chants and prayers? A late-90s video game starring a green, gun-toting, anthropomorphic hare who's too legit to quit, I suppose. Yup, that’s Jazz Jackrabbit 2. It was a fairly typical run-and-gun platformer that could never quite complete with its rival series of Sonic the Hedgehog and was eventually forgotten by most. It was quite good and I had fun with it when I was little, but that soundtrack still slaps well after Jazz hung up his bandana.

There’s a superb groove through everything on the soundtrack, but despite its name, this ain’t jazz. It’s all electronic; trance, techno and other electronica play a big role in the sound, and there’s a few little pastiches in there, but for the most part this is funk. This isn’t some crude replica, either – this funk is hard. Yes, the instrument sounds aren’t the best – it’s only a couple of steps above General MIDI – which lends it a particularly ‘gamey’ feel, but the synth sounds are quite good and the music itself is of a quality that can utterly transcend those timbres. You’ll forget that the instruments are shitty reproductions or whatever, because they work so well in context.

Soundtracks can be weird sometimes, because their quality isn’t necessarily tied to the quality or popularity of the thing they’re soundtracking in the first place. That’s how you can get some proper righteous instrumental funk locked up within a mildly unsuccessful PC game. It’s a shame, really – the music fits the game well, but it really does stand well on its own, and hasn’t dated nearly as badly as the game. This stuff deserves to be heard on its own merits.

032: Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal, by the Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa

The Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa (Senegal)
Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal (1997)
17 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Musical fusions are absolutely everywhere now – if you can think of two types of music from anywhere in the world, the chances there’s been a meeting in some studio to record a collaboration of the two. Some are better than others, but most of them have the simple goal of putting two styles together and seeing if they sound good. The fusion heard on this albums is much more organic than most.

The Abbaye de Keur Moussa is a Benedictine abbey not too far out of the Senegalese capital Dakar. When you consider that Senegal is a country where more than 90% of the population is Muslim (and most of Senegal’s neighbours have a similar or higher percentage), an entire abbey of Catholic monks is certainly a point of interest. Add in the important roles that music of very different kinds play in Senegalese and Benedictine societies, well…

When I first heard of the existence of the Keur Moussa abbey, I knew I had to find out about its music. I wasn’t disappointed. This is some of the most fascinating music out there, I would say. The monks – some of them French, most of them Senegalese – make music that reflects their two cultures in a unique way.

There actually seems to be loads of recordings out there of the monks performing their duties – from sermons to music to prayer – but this album is the one that’s gotten the most exposure. It shows a good range of the music of the abbey: there are a cappella pieces of Benedictine chant and liturgy, and there are a few instrumental-only tracks which showcase the traditional West African instruments. The most intriguing tracks in this collection for me, though, are those where the two soundworlds meet, where kora and balafon are used to accompany the chant. There’s an interesting push-and-pull at work during these moments: sometimes the melody and rhythms of the chant take on a distinctly Senegalese feel; at others, the instruments work more in a European idiom. There’s even a lovely instrumental meeting between kora and oboe in the track ‘Dédicace (Dedication),’ which comes out as quite a jolly classical piece.

It’s all recorded there in the abbey, with all the associated godly reverb you would expect. With everything all together, the effect is palpable. There’s no escaping that this music is deeply religious and meditative, and with that comes a real sense of calm that permeates through it. It’s also just refreshing to hear an international music fusion that has come about in this way, to perform a real function in a literal hybrid culture, rather than a musical objet d’art manufactured for outside ears.