212: The Raga Guide, by Various Artists

Various Artists (India)
The Raga Guide (1999)
74 tracks, 314 minutes (4 CDs)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The Raga Guide is a rare thing: a wonderful resource for every level of listeners, from complete newbies, to fans wanting to know more, to serious academic scholars. The standard is such that I’m sure even hardcore disciples of Hindustani classical music would rate this collection.

Because this isn’t just an album. The Raga Guide is, quite naturally, a guide of 74 of the most common ragas – melodic systems that are somewhere between scales and compositions – used in the northern Indian Hindustani classical tradition. The guide is split between a book and four CDs. The book, edited by ethnomusicologist Joep Bor, gives the history of each raga, a musical description and transcription (illustrated with Western staff notation), an example set of lyrics in English and Hindi and a reproduction of a ragamala painting from the 17th century – paintings that describe the mood and personality of each raga.

And then alongside the book, the four CDs contain examples of every one of those ragas. While in a true performance setting, performances of a raga can stretch to hours long, based as they are around fantastical improvisation and meditation on the tones and colours of the notes and their relationships to each other…but The Raga Guide gives you the down-low of each by presenting it in the form of a very short, unmetered and improvised introductory alap section, before the rhythm of the table kicks in for a composed section or song and then another short improvised section before it comes to a close. Most of them are only around four minutes long; the longest barely touches six minutes.

It’s tempting to think that, because these performances are conducted in such an unorthodox manner, that they must be doing this ancient and noble tradition a real disservice. But while the performances here are no doubt a little shallow compared to the full exploration of the true meanings of the raga in full, these are undoubtedly wonderful little self-contained performances in and of themselves. No wonder: four renowned musicians perform the 74 pieces between them – there’s Hariprasad Chaurasia on bansuri (bamboo flute), Buddhadev Das Gupta on sarod (fretless lute), and Shruti Sadolikar Katkar and Vidyadhar Vyas on vocals (female and male respectively).

The Raga Guide really is a stunning work, of both scholarship and musicianship. Anyone with the slightest interest in Hindustani classical music should consult a copy of the book and delve deep into the accompanying albums. If nothing else you will find one of the most comprehensive repertoires of ragas anywhere, all in bitesize chunks ideal for dipping into…or delving into, deep and headfirst if you feel that way inclined.

211: New Fuji Garbage, by Barrister & Africa’s International Music Ambassadors

Barrister & Africa’s International Music Ambassadors (Nigeria)
New Fuji Garbage (1991)
2 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Now there’s a title that grabs the attention. If you had no other information to go off, what would you expect from an album called New Fuji Garbage? Well, it’s not Japanese, I can tell you that much.

What it is is the invention of that regal-looking fella on the front of the cover, here known as Barrister but whose full (and possibly exaggerated) title was Chief Dr Alhaji Sikiru Ololade Ayinde Balogun. The best way for me to describe fuji is not to bother, it will only sound lame in comparison to listening to the music itself, so you may as well just go and do that. The second best way for me to describe it is layers-on-layers of drums and percussion, each playing their own infectious rhythms over, on top of and in between all the others, with occasional snippets of ultra-catchy vocals, synth or pedal steel guitar. Barrister conjured this music from all sorts of different Nigerian styles from the guitar-based pop of jùjú (made most famous by King Sunny Adé) to Islamic percussion music played by Yoruba teenagers at Ramadan, and from them all distilled a sound that is at once stripped back to its bare essentials as well as being incredibly complex.

On this hour-long album, there’s only two tracks, and the title of the first ‘Refined Fuji Garbage’ perhaps gives you the clue that this is generous: it’s refined, because in its usual form, there’s no way that you could contain a fuji groove to just 30 minutes – these things could go on for hours on just one handful of riffs and rhythms. It all stretches out and out and out for as long as you could want, until you’re more sweat than person and your legs have danced into another dimension.

So that’s fuji. Why is it garbage? Who knows. Barrister was certainly enamoured with the phrase (this is his fourth album to be dedicated as such) and it does have a proper punk ring to it, which I really appreciate. But surely it’s sarcastic. This ain’t no rubbish – everything is perfectly in place and it’s all fresh as hell. But when that first track kicks off and he’s telling you “rise up to dance to my new fuji garbage, rise up to dance to my new fuji garbage,” you really better listen to him. You can believe that I’m gonna be rising up to dance to his new fuji garbage.

210: Street Signs, by Ozomatli

Ozomatli (USA)
Street Signs (2004)
13 tracks, 52 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’m heading off to Boomtown festival in a couple of weeks and Ozomatli are right at the top of my must-see list. They are seriously one of the very best live bands I’ve ever seen – they can turn any occasion into a party within seconds of arriving on stage and it doesn’t let up until they’re leading the crowd on a massive samba from within. While their sound has evolved across their 24 years, their core has stayed basically consistent: Latin music of all colours (from salsa to cumbia to mariachi to the aforementioned samba) with a whole load of hip-hop in there and a good measure of rock, and usually with some pointed lyrics too. This is the real sound of Los Angeles.

When you have a band whose live shows are such a tour de force, it’s sometimes hard for their studio albums to live up to the same standard. That’s not a worry when it comes to Street Signs, although it does stick out as a little bit different from the rest of the group’s albums. It was Ozomatli’s third full length release out of (currently) eight studio albums, and it is by far their most ‘world music’ of offerings. Their first two (1998’s Ozomatli and 2001’s Embrace the Chaos) were much more focused on the Latin hip-hop thing, and afterward they went in a more good-time pop-rock direction. On Street Signs, though, they brought all sorts of stuff to the table, from Arabic sounds to Balkan brass, flamenco to Indian elements, and all without taking anything away from that classic Ozo sound.

This eclectic mix is also apparent in the amount and variety of guests on the album. There are so many: there’s featured artists such as Nuyorican salsa piano legend Eddie Palmieri, Los Lobos frontman David Hidalgo and baritone rapper and erstwhile Ozo member Chali 2na, but there’s also more subtle and less assuming guest slots for other stars in their own right such as Gnawa master Hassan Hakmoun and French Roma jazz group Les Yeux Noirs. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan even gets a co-writer’s credit on ‘Believe’, although I’ve never been able to work out what for, exactly. Usually albums with a buttload of guests end up sounding stilted and try-hard, but not this one. Everyone just fits in where they’re supposed to, never take up too much room than necessary and just slot right into the Ozomatli party.

Because, for all its difference from the band’s other records, Street Signs still has that same atmosphere. Tracks such as ‘Saturday Night’ and ‘Street Signs’ are typical Ozo bangers with some amazing raps and blaring horns, but even when they do something different such as the brooding opener ‘Believe’ or Chali 2na’s Egyptian-flavoured guest number ‘Who’s to Blame’ have a suitably political message while all but requiring you to dance along.

Street Signs is Ozo’s most esoteric album of their career so far, but I still reckon it’s their best all-round set. But as good as it is, you don’t want to hear this coming out of your stereo speakers – you want to hear it all going on in front of you in all its sweaty, chaotic glory. Ozomatli: see them live at any cost; if you can’t, Street Signs is still as good a time as any.

209: Jazz Epistle Verse 1, by The Jazz Epistles

The Jazz Epistles (South Africa)
Jazz Epistle Verse 1 (1960)
8 tracks, 43 minutes
Only the so-called ‘complete’ collected recordings of the Jazz Epistles is available online, which can be found here: Spotify ∙ iTunes. They’re actually not complete though, as they lack the track ‘I Remember Billy’ from this album – you can listen to it here.

The Jazz Epistles are considered to be the first ‘progressive jazz’ group in South Africa. While there had been jazz and jazz-influenced styles played in the country for a few decades, the Jazz Epistles were the first coherent group to work in the small-band style of the bebop and post-bop idioms as opposed to the big band of swing or the solo piano of ragtime.

If there’s such thing as a pre-supergroup, then the Jazz Epistles would fit that billing. Of the six bandmembers, at least three of them were or became South African jazz legends. First there's alto saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, who was already a popular name in South African jazz as the leader of marabi band the Jazz Dazzlers, and then there's Kippie’s protégés, Hugh Masekela on trumpet and Dollar Brand on piano. The Epistles’ sessions were the first time either of these musicians had been recorded, and both went on to be huge international stars in the worlds of jazz and beyond (Dollar Brand eventually becoming known as Abdullah Ibrahim). The remaining three of Jonas Gwangwa (trombone), Johnny Gertze (double bass) and Makaya Ntshako (drums) went on to become valuable members of Masekela’s and Ibrahim’s bands, even if they never made the leap to bandleaders themselves.

Recorded in the epochal year of 1959, Jazz Epistle Verse 1 – the only album recorded by the group – is very much characteristic of a late-50s American jazz record, with its mix of blueses, bops and ballads. In fact, the music here is virtually indistinguishable as South African as opposed to American, although maybe there is a slightest hint in Ibrahim’s piano playing on his own compositions of ‘Uku-Jonga Phambili’ and ‘Gafsa’. Nevertheless, even without a unique flavour of the band’s heritage, the music is very accomplished, especially being the first of its kind in the country. Even at this point, the players’ personalities are strong: Moeketsi’s style is more that of the old fashioned bebop, Ibrahim’s a much further-forward take including super-extended chords and unusual progressions, and Masekela’s flits between the two but mostly settles in the post-bop realm.

Perhaps Jazz Epistle Verse 1 is not the most groundbreaking record in the history of jazz, but it’s certainly an important milestone in the evolution of South African popular music, made even more interesting for its recording debuts of two of the country’s most successful ever musicians.

208: Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, by Skip James

Skip James (USA)
Hard Time Killing Floor Blues (2003)
12 tracks, 51 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Recorded in 1964, the session that this album collects was the first time Skip James had recorded in 33 years. After only very mild success pre-war, James had become basically unknown until the big blues revival of the 60s, when young fans were eagerly digging through old record collections, tracking down the names the found there and persuading them out of retirement.

For me, of all the old guard of pre-war delta blues, Skip James is among the very top of them. He’s not as recognised outside blues circles as others such as Robert Johnson or even Son House, but his songs really touch the soul. The song that names this album, ‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ is a low-down rumination on despair and a hard life lived, real stereotypical blues stuff, but delivered with such voice-cracking emotion that every word is gut-wrenching, and the worksong-like hummed chorus is utterly transcendent.

Considering that James was 62, very ill and (presumably) a little out-of-practice at the time of this recording, his quality is simply stunning. His voice, high-pitched in his earlier recordings, is lower but just as sweet. His fingers are slightly less nimble on his guitar but still capture the same magic. His age also lends another aspect to his music, particularly in the songs ‘Washington DC Hospital Blues’ and ‘Sickbed Blues’, which are sad and subdued blueses written of his illness that would eventually get the better of him five years later.

I can’t really be drawn as to which are the better recordings for music fans – besides, the correct answer is obviously ‘go listen to both’! Being recorded so far apart, they really are different listening prospects, even though much of the repertoire is the same. The older recordings are very noisy due to their age and recording methods, which may not suit everyone’s ears, but you do get to hear James’ piano playing, giving an interesting twist on the delta blues. So really, whether you decide to come at Skip James as his 29-year-old self or his 62-year-old self, you will be approaching the work of a true master not just of finger-picked guitar or of blues songwriting, but also of emotional evocation.

207: Deal With It!, by Brass Jaw

Brass Jaw (United Kingdom)
Deal With It! (2010)
15 tracks, 58 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Brass Jaw started life as a saxophone quartet of alto, two tenors and a baritone – you can hear that formation on their first album Burn. As a young saxophonist at the time, I was thrilled to see them live and hear saxes used in this way, providing really high-class jazz and making every sound themselves. Then I was disappointed a few years later when I caught them again and they’d replaced one of their tenors with a trumpet instead. It is a shame that they dropped the sax quartet thing, but I have to admit that their sound is much more nuanced that way.

The quality is of little surprise: their line-up of Ryan Quigley (trumpet), Paul Towndrow (alto sax), Konrad Wiszniewski (tenor sax) and Allon Beauvoisin (bari sax) have an amazing pedigree in the Scottish jazz scene. Their names are consistently sprinkled across so many great albums and projects, but Brass Jaw is a bit of a unique prospect. Because there’s no rhythm section, the whole thing is based on textures. Beauvoisin usually (and understandably) takes the bass part, which flutters from his bari sax as nimbly and deftly as any feather-fingered double bassist, and the other three juggle the melodies, countermelodies and harmony together among themselves. With so many roles swapping hands all the time, and the harmonies often being build out of four simultaneous melodic strands, it often resembles an intracate jazz counterpoint.

Deal With It! was Brass Jaw’s first album with a trumpet and, although in some regards they were still in a period of transition, the standard is as high as you’d expect. There’s quite a few covers on this one, with their sleazy and slurred rendition of ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ and the lightning-paced version of Horace Silver’s ‘Señor Blues’ the highlights, but their own compositions such as ‘Holding Pattern’ and ‘Pigeon English Sunrise’ taking things into different directions and showing their creativity on the experimental side.

Brass Jaw are still a quartet, but nowadays they’ve changed shape yet again – Quigley on trumpet has been replaced by trombonist Michael Owers. I’ve not seen them with that line-up yet, and there’s no albums, but a 2014 EP gives a little bit of a glimpse: of course, it sounds as good as ever. I can’t wait to hear what they come up with next!

206: Fun House, by the Stooges

The Stooges (USA)
Fun House (1970)
7 tracks, 37 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

After the idyllic soundscapes of yesterday chilled us all right out, let’s get angry today.

Fun House is the second of only three albums by original incarnation of The Stooges, and the last one before Iggy Pop took a starring role in the band’s name. They remind me quite a lot of their contemporaries The Doors, actually. They were both taking the psychedelic rock of the 1960s into fresh new places, but where Jim Morisson’s crew seem to lean more into the prog rock side of things, Iggy’s were definitely what we can now call proto-punk.

This music is simply incandescent. It has so much from music that preceded it, from Hendrix’s psych-blues and The Who’s hard rock, obviously a lot from the psychedelic era and even cues from free jazz with Steve Mackay’s saxophone, but there is something in there that sets it so apart from all of these others. It’s aggressive, anarchic and chaotic; it’s angry but it also sounds like it was a whole lot of fun to make – and it is to listen to, too. Although this record pre-dates punk by a good few years, that aesthetic is clearly starting to take shape on Fun House, and it ends up being an electrifying ‘best of both worlds.’

This is one of those ‘cult’ albums that never really achieved the success it deserved in its first run, but blew up later. It’s a sign of a band truly ahead of their time – the world mustn’t have been ready for the Stooges’ sound at that point. Once people’s ears had gotten more used to the looser, unpredictable and flailing attitude that would come to embody punk, Fun House began to make sense again. It’s strange that such an amazing album – now rightly regarded as one of the most influential in rock – wasn’t rated at the time, but at least we know now.

The version I have is actually a two-disc affair with a bunch of demos, outtakes and other miscellanea on the second disc, but that’s really only for completists. Stick to the original seven tracks if you want a tightly-packed 37 minutes of intense but perfectly balanced noise that sounds as much a part of what came before it as what came after.

205: How Our Birds Sing, Vol. 1, recorded by Hans A. Traber

Hans A. Traber (Switzerland)
How Our Birds Sing, Vol. 1 (1988)
32 tracks, 52 minutes
Spotify

It’s my birthday! So as a treat to myself I’m actually picking today’s album rather than letting the robot decide, and I’ve gone for something a bit different.

It’s just a bunch of birds!

I love the sound of birdsong. I feel like it has a real restorative quality to it. When I lived in Berlin, a few times a year my job required me to be getting home at about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning after a really long and intense day at work. To be walking home through the communal garden at that time to a complete cacophony of what sounded like hundreds of birds after a whole day of stress was like a beautiful massage for the mind, and I’d often just sit there with them for half an hour, letting the sounds bathe me before heading to bed. Now I live in London, and there are far fewer birds here. When I can, I cycle into the countryside to enjoy the quiet…and it’s interesting that the birdsong never intrudes into this quiet, it never registers as ‘noise.’ Those beautiful calls fill up my soul, ready to come back to the city and run on that as fuel.

And when that isn’t possible…that’s when Hans Traber’s work comes in. There are actually quite a few different recordings that I could have listed here (including extended Youtube videos of dawn choruses), but the variety of How Our Birds Sing is really lovely. The 32* birds recorded here are from Central Europe, so although most of them are the same as you’ll hear in the UK, including superstars such as the robin, the blackbird and the wren, there’s also a few that are more foreign to these shores, including the usually elusive nightingale.

It is truly lovely to sit and appreciate these recordings for the sounds they contain. Some are simple and short chirrups, squeaks and bleeps, others are virtuosic and long, taking wild and sometimes unpredictable turns while remaining reminiscent of human music. It’s mad when you think that it’s all basically small feathery things bellowing “fuck me” or “fuck off” isn’t it? At least they have the decency to be poetic about it.

I don’t know whether you’ll have the same reaction to these birds as I do. It may be because I’ve come from a rural area to a big and busy city; your mileage may vary. But whether or not you listen to this album, I urge you to get up (or, more fun, stay up) to see a dawn chorus every so often and revel in the sheer mastery of the bird world. Nature provides its own Good Albums, we only try our best to imitate it.

*There’s another 75 recordings across the other three volumes too!

204: Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight, by Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix (USA/United Kingdom)
Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (2002)
18 tracks, 119 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

“A bit more volume on this one Charlie, it’s gonna need it! Let’s have a welcome for Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums…and the man with the guitar…Jimi Hendrix.” The words that opened Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in the early hours of 31 August 1970, as well as this recording of it and several other live compilations, have been burnt into my memory since childhood. Simple yet effective. A few seconds of tuning up…and then straight in with the trio’s anarchic version of ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Not a bad way to start a set.

It’s Jimi #3! I’ve already covered Axis: Bold as Love and People, Hell and Angels before, and Blue Wild Angel is going to be the last Jimi on this blog, and the only live album of his. I obviously chose this one because I enjoy it (it is a Good Album, after all), but so many reviews and discussions of this set talk about how Jimi sounds dispirited, his music lacking in passion and the overall performance falling flat. That seems so strange to me, it’s as if I’m listening to a different record than the rest of them. I won’t claim that the performance is perfect, but there are so many sparkling moments all the way throughout that by far make up for any jetlag-fuelled moments of less-than-peak energy.

There’s even bits where some of the performance’s rougher edges are turned into moments of genius. The epic 22-minute version of ‘Machine Gun’ sees Jimi’s solo interrupted by walkie-talkie chatter from the festival’s security personnel interfering with the sound equipment. So what happens? He just builds it into his solo. Without warning and completely on the fly, he turns something that would derail other musicians into something that makes this one a truly unique performance. It goes almost without saying that Jimi’s guitar playing is immense all the way through here, because I don’t think he was capable of any less. His band – half Experience and half Band of Gypsies – have an easy confidence to them and, as always, I’m in awe at the drumming of Mitch Mitchell, who seamlessly turns jazz technique into the perfect accompaniment for Jimi’s heavy blues rock.

Despite what you think of this album as a whole, it’s still mad to think that, just 18 days after it was recorded, Jimi was dead at the age of just 27. What madness to achieve such a height at such a young age. His death was obviously not natural, so it obviously had no bearing on his performance at the Isle of Wight, but it nevertheless gives the whole thing a slightly surreal aspect to it. You can’t help but marvel that the fleetingness of life and the suddenness of death, even when music like this makes you feel so alive.

203: Space Echo – The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed!, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Cabo Verde)
Space Echo – The Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed! (2016)
15 tracks, 69 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

This was a weird one when it came out. To me, the prospect of psychedelic synth music from Cabo Verde was enough to get me interested, but perhaps the wider listening public needed a bit more persuasion. So when the record label, Analog Africa, announced the album with a press release, where there would normally be a story of how the musical subculture came to be, and how the album came to be compiled, there was…well, a different story instead. It started with a strange but plausible story of how a shipment of synthesisers and electronic music equipment disappeared between the US and Brazil in the late 1960s, only to appear in Cabo Verde a few months later to kickstart a wave of synth music there in the 1970s. But then the story evolves, with the ship appearing to have fallen from the sky and for modern research to reveal that it had in fact fallen from space – a truly cosmic origin for the music’s intergalactic sound.

It’s an amusing story – and you can read it in full on Bandcamp – and I was taken in by it to start off with before the fun reveal. But the amount of times the first part of this story was recounted as fact by respected music journalists and papers such as the Guardian actually baffled me. Surely they did more than skim the press release before regurgitating it into their piece as fact? Maybe I have too much faith in music journalism. The writer of the Guardian article did say they asked the label, Analog Africa, to confirm the ‘true’ parts of the story, but even that doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny. But there we are.

It seems I’ve not left much space to really talk about the music, so let’s power through: it’s really good, of course. There’s synths all over it, as you’d expect from the above, and there’s lots of influences from the Americas with each track showing varying amount of soul, disco, funk, rock and even Mexican and Cuban music. But those are all just influences – all the music here is so Cabo Verdean. The pieces may have the blingy instruments and flashy foreign sounds, but they’re all based on the Cabo Verdean forms of morna, coladera, tabanka and, most excitingly, funaná. The latter is traditionally the music of accordions and iron scrapers, replaced here with synths and hi-hats. All of the styles, with their unique soulful longing, the saudade that makes Cabo Verdean music sound so heartwrenching, may seem like a strange fit for the up-tempo astral voyages of synthfunk, but it all works so well.

There have been so many reissues and rereleases of African music from the 60s to the 80s over the past decade, and along with them so many amazing and surprising rediscoveries to be had among them. Space Echo is a wonderful example of this, but also perhaps a lesson not to let your surprised amazement have you believe every fanciful and exotic story you read in a press release…

202: Vignettes EP, by Lee Westwood

Lee Westwood (United Kingdom)
Vignettes EP (2017)
6 tracks, 20 minutes
Bandcamp

I knew Lee Westwood’s music from his work with Dizraeli. As part of Dizraeli and the Small Gods, his expert acoustic guitar playing straddled the line between folk-baroque and jazz; knowing this, when the Small Gods had disbanded and Westwood released some of his own material, I expected to be at least somewhat like that, or perhaps more on the jazzier side of things. I was wrong. Vignettes is one piece of music split up into six short movements. It’s an experimental classical work for a duo of flute (played here by Philippe Barnes) and oboe (Suzie Shrubb).

Because they’re both melody instruments (that is, they can only play one note at a time instead of chords), there is no space for either instrument to play a secondary role to the other. The whole piece revolves around the relationship between the two instruments, and across the 20 minutes, they both develop as characters, with distinct personalities. It’s a little as if this piece is a dance, but instead of bodies, the physical movements, shapes and gestures are reflected in the travels of the two woodwinds. And it does feel like travels, or journeys or adventures. Each instrument has their own melody line that are sometimes very close to each other, in harmony or even in unison, but sometimes they can be far apart from each other, playing seemingly unrelated tunes before coming back together again. Sometimes they are close, but separate, their timings slightly out of sync with each other, or their usually complementary lines clashing in dissonance occasionally. It’s bizarrely easy to anthropomorphise these two intersecting melody lines, and I find that so impressive.

The music itself shows quite a lot of influences in its short duration. While its performance is in the Western classical idiom, there are plenty of harmonies and small melodic quirks that are actually quite jazzy. There are portions that are quite Debussy-esque, but also parts which must surely have been informed by styles such as gagaku, the elegant and dramatic Japanese court music.

It is really amazing how effective – and affective – just a relatively short duologue between a flute and an oboe can be. From tensely cinematic to lightly playful, there is so much to hear here. Come on this adventure and experience it yourself.

201: Love Songs, Vol. 2, by Yishak Banjaw

Yishak Banjaw (Ethiopia)
Love Songs, Vol. 2 (1986/2016)
8 tracks, 46 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ iTunes

When I first heard this it blew my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I certainly couldn’t stop telling people about it, and playing it to anyone foolish enough to stand still next to me for enough time for me to get me iPod out. I’d listened to a lot of Ethiopian music before – and even been there myself – so when I was asked to review another Ethiopian album (one called Love Songs, no less), I thought I knew what was coming. Obviously I did not.

Yishak Banjaw’s music is traditionally Ethiopian in its scales, its rhythms and its composition. The only thing he really does differently is play it all on a Casio PT keyboard with enthusiastic use of all the various synth options and some programmed beats. And it seems to change it completely. There are similarities with Charanjit Singh’s 10 Ragas to a Disco Beat in terms of the story of how the records came to be and the way they were made, but whereas the Indian record came out sounding like acid house five years before that even became a thing, Banjaw’s music gives me realｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅtingles.

Everything about this record sounds a little off-kilter. It’s all ever-so-slightly warped and washed out, and there’s a hiss from the tape transfer, which all lend a faintly unsettling vibe to it in a way that is hard to pinpoint. As all the synths swirl together in those unmistakably Ethiopian shapes while using the alien-sounding timbres, your mind gets dragged along into the maelstrom, having the same effect as the hypnotist’s spiral.

I really love this album and its retro vibes, but what’s really exciting is that I just found out he’s still making music and releasing albums as late as 2017, and they’ve not stopped being any less enigmatically cool as his work from the 80s. Check this shit out. The synths are more modern, the sound is a little cleaner and the sensibility is slightly more to the pop side of things, but it’s so good to hear that he’s still making his unique music three decades later. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more Ｅｔｈｉｏｐｉａｎｗａｖｅ to catch up on…

200: Une Meeles, by Maarja Nuut

Maarja Nuut (Estonia)
Une Meeles (2016)
12 tracks, 39 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The whole charm of Maarja Nuut’s music in the atmospheres. Une Meeles is almost completely solo: just her fiddle and voice which are looped and electronically altered to create amazing, spine-tingling sonics (the only exceptions are a sample of an Estonian soundscape and one fiddle duet). Her music is heavily informed by her deep studies into the folk music of Estonia, which she uses to create her own compositions. Each piece is carefully and intricately constructed, and the whole way, it is the atmosphere that is at the centre of the sound. It’s chilly, ethereal and sparkly; arboreal; sometimes spooky; it’s misty and mystical and magical. The whole thing rings clear like a glass bell. Above all, it’s very, very beautiful.

When I was making notes listening to this album, I ended up pinpointing almost every track as especially beautiful, but of course they all are, for so many reasons. In ‘Hobusemäng’, the second track on the album, after one-and-a-half pieces all in the standard fiddle range, she suddenly brings in an octave peddle, lurching one of her loops down to the pitch of a double bass, it’s so unexpected and exciting; ‘Ödangule’ is a fully a cappella piece based on several stunning vocal loops; ‘Siidisulis Linnukene’ has echoes of Scottish fiddle, ‘Kiik Tahab Kindaid’ echoes of Albanian and maybe North Indian music… A long and beautiful poem could be written about each piece on this album. There is also quite a naivety to a lot of Nuut’s songs, some of which sound quite like nursery rhymes (although they usually descend into something vaguely unsettling). With so much drawn from Estonian folk traditions, I wonder how much inspiration comes directly from children’s songs, or whether I only think that because of some coincidental (or extremely ancient) similarity to British children’s songs.

It was hard to choose between this album and Nuut’s first, Soolo from 2013 (which I very much urge you to check out too). I think that’s a tough decision for me because whenever I’m in the mood for it, I usually just play them back-to-back. That’s intentional, too: while this one feel a little less ‘traditional’ than the first, Nuut’s own description notes that the material on this album ‘directly builds off of motifs from her previous album.’

I feel like I could wax lyrical and muse poetical about Maarja Nuut’s work for days. This is music that is really intriguing to listen deeply and with much thought, but it’s perhaps even more satisfying to listen to with no thought at all, with a blank mind ready to be filled with the mysterious waves of Nuut’s hundred fiddles and thousand voices, and taken to an alternate plane of Estonian mythology and mysticism.

199: Music of Central Asia, Vol. 6: Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan, by Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova

Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova (Azerbaijan)
Music of Central Asia, Vol. 6: Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan (2007)
11 tracks, 71 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is another album from a phenomenal set of releases, the Aga Khan Music Initiative’s ten-album Music of Central Asia series. The AKMI is an initiative overseen by the Aga Khan, the leader of the Nizari Ismailis within Islam, and its stated aim is to promote, internationally, the music of all those from Muslim lands and to educate people about this music both in its native cultures and around the world. This CD series, which ran from its first release in 2006 to 2012, was the initiative’s first project and focuses, as its name would suggest, on the classical and folk musics of Central Asia and its historical cultural links. There are albums in the series which focus on music from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, as well as collaborations with Chinese, Indian and American musicians and an album by the specially-created interesting pan-regional, all-female ensemble Bardic Divas. Again, this is a record series of the highest quality, and if you want to set off on a journey into Central Asian music, it’s one of the best places you can start. I will write about another album in the series later on in the year sometime, because it’s a little different, but for now I’ve chosen to write about this one by Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova, performers of mugham music from Azerbaijan.

Admittedly, choosing this album has put me in a bit of an awkward position, because I’ve basically written as much as I really feel qualified to write about mugham back when I covered the album by Gochag Askarov. But I really wanted to include this album in the list because Alim Qasimov is considered the grandmaster of the style. Listening to Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan makes it clear why: his voice and his technique are infinitely subtle, and so powerful even when the passages are quiet – it feels as though his voice is an intense dam holding back the ferocity of the true might of mugham in full swing. What else makes this album special is that it is a series of duets with his daughter, Farghana Qasimova, who is herself a young master of the style. While it is not unknown for women to perform mugham, duets of any kind are incredibly rare, and male-female duets especially. Because Farghana learnt the art at her father’s knee, their personal styles are very similar, and their aim is to sing separately, but ‘with one voice,’ each representing two halves of one whole.

On this album, they together showcase a range of mugham performance styles, beginning will a full, seven-part mugham suite and finishing up with four more modern compositions that take the classical style in a different direction, or focus on its folk-based origins. Also, the last track is called ‘Köhlen Atim’, which translates to ‘My Splendid Horse’ or, if you will, ‘My Lovely Horse’, so I like that, it’s good.

If you want to know more about this album as you listen to it, the full, in-depth liner notes are available at the AKMI website, including lyrics and discussion of every piece – and that’s the case for the whole series too, it really is a wonderful resource. Hopefully this volume can lead you on to listening to all the others in the series in time – so there’s ten Good Albums for the price of one!

198: Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne: Le Mali des Sables, les Songoy, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Mali)
Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne: Le Mali des Sables, les Songoy (1970)
10 tracks, 51 minutes
Download from the Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya blog ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne is a legendary set of six recordings by Bärenreiter-Musicaphon from Germany. They weren’t quite the earliest studio recordings made in Mali, but as far as I recall, they were the first recordings commissioned by the Malian government. The country was only 10 years independent by the time these records were released, and they were meant to instil in Malians a pride based on the heterogeneity of their new nation. So, of the six recordings there is an album by the Instrumental Ensemble of Mali, whose members represented a broad range of Malian cultures; one by Fanta Damba, a Bamana jeli (griot) who was considered the best singer of her generation; Cords Anciennes, a famous recording – the first ever – of instrumental kora duets and trios featuring the masters Sidiki Diabaté, Djelimady Sissoko and Batourou Sekou Kouyaté among others; and then three compilations of field recordings arranged by ethnicity, one on the music of the Mandinka, one of the Fula (or Peul) and one of the Songhai. All six are exquisite records of wonderful music and I urge everyone to listen to all of them.

Buuutttt, I’ve chosen to highlight the Songhai album in particular, for no special reason other than it’s quite rare nowadays to hear the ‘traditional’ music of the Songhai, who mostly live around the Niger bend in the north of Mali, including the cities of Timbuktu and Gao. There is quite a lot of Songhai music available nowadays – guitarist Ali Farka Touré is probably the most famous exponent – but so much of that music takes a lot of cues from rock and blues. That’s not a slight either, a lot of it is absolutely brilliant, but it does mean that the older roots of the style are heard much less outside of Mali than the rocked-up versions. This album gives a glimpse into what those traditions sounded like in the 1960s.

Because the album is part of an anthology, it makes sense that this compilation traverses a number of styles from the Songhai people. Most of the pieces are songs or recitations, performed by men and women and usually with the accompaniment of the ngoni, the boat-shaped lute found throughout Mali (although I don’t know the Songhai name for the instrument, sorry). Because there’s such a variety, each piece has a different aspect to it that you should definitely check out, but there are two tracks that really electrify me.

The track ‘Takamba’ (which is actually the name of the style, rather than the piece) is simply stunning. It’s a solo ngoni piece and it’s 7000% blues. I sat down today and tried to play it on the guitar. Obviously I couldn’t do it (my guitar skills leave much to be desired), but what was clear was that all the way through, the ngoni is playing exactly what we would call the blues scale, every one of the notes lines up, all the bends are in the same places along the scale, and even the hammer-ons and pull-offs are exactly what would be expected from a delta blues player. There are even points where you could slip right into the riffs from ‘Rollin’ Stone’ and there would be no clashes in there at all.

There’s also a really fascinating track, here entitled simply ‘Moorish Guitar’. Most of the tracks have at least a small description of the song, its lyrics and its cultural meaning (although the description for ‘Takamba’ is literally just ‘Played on a three-stringed guitar’), but this one says nothing other than it was recorded at Banamba. So this is a guess, but from what my ears are telling me and the ‘title’ of the piece, this is a Songhoi musician playing the oud in a sort of half-ngoni way, including tapping the soundboard of the instrument to provide percussion, and of course with all the bluesiness along with it all.

One of the reasons Malian music has been so successful internationally is because there’s just so much of it, with such huge variety of different styles and sounds to be heard across the length and breadth of the country. If you want to have a little bit of a primer to the more traditional side of things in Malian music, the Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne is a great place to start.

197: Midnight Marauders, by A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest (USA)
Midnight Marauders (1993)
15 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is an interesting album to compare to Us3’s Hand on the Torch. That album and A Tribe Called Quest’s were both released in the same year, 1993, and they both show different ways of approaching a very similar thing. Because for all intents and purposes, A Tribe Called Quest – and Midnight Marauders – are jazz hip-hop, but their style is approached from the opposite direction: Us3 was created with the intention of using a catalogue of samples from classic jazz to create hip-hop; Tribe just set out to make great hip-hop and use jazz as a tool for that. Back when I wrote about Us3, I called their album ‘semi-successful’ but prescient of the future sound of jazz. Midnight Marauders is a much more successful album.

I think it’s because it was made with so little pretence. Us3’s sound was, almost by definition, contrived, but Tribe’s feels so much more real, organic. Their instrumentals, created in the most part by Q-Tip on production and Ali Shaheed Muhammad as DJ, are top-class and built up from really diverse samples from vintage funk, soul and, yep, jazz, as well as intelligent and subtle beats programming, but importantly, it’s all made with the raps in mind. Here, the raps are the whole point of the record, and why shouldn’t they be? Between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, the lyrics are insightful, thoughtful and meaningful, emotional but witty, often uplifting but pointed when necessary. The flows are exquisite, and, even though they still have a touch of early hip-hop’s nursery rhymes to them, the rhythms are interesting. The end result is that the music is a perfect fit for the vocals, and the vocals are a perfect fit for the music – an acutely balanced symbiotic relationship that works for the benefit of both.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that an album made for hip-hop fans is a better hip-hop album than one that aims to reach a crossover audience with a specific musical concept. And of course it is. Because for all intents and purposes, A Tribe Called Quest – and Midnight Marauders – are not jazz hip-hop, they’re merely hip-hop that use jazz in its most fruitful way to create their own rightfully legendary sound.

196: LDA v the Lunatics, by Los de Abajo

Los de Abajo (Mexico)
LDA v the Lunatics (2005)
15 tracks, 65 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Before this album, Los de Abajo were seen as the kings and queen of ‘salsa punk,’ but on this album they took a bit of a change of direction. Salsa and punk are still very much in evidence, but so are ska, mariachi, cumbia, dub and mestizo music, all rolled up together. We’ve already seen that Latin music and ska are a potent mix with Ska Cubano, but Mexican music has a bit more of an edge to it, and I think that comes from their culture’s much stronger connection to their pre-Columbian heritage. It means that LDA’s music is a meeting of three different sound worlds, the Latin, the African and the Mesoamerican. They even sing in the indigenous language of Zapotec on the track ‘Tortuga Dub’.

What prompted LDA’s proliferation of styles? Probably a lot of things, I don’t know them personally. BUT I reckon a big part of the sound of this album comes from the producers, UK duo Temple of Sound. We’ve featured Temple of Sound quite a bit so far on this blog (and we’ll continue to throughout the year) although not in that name yet, I think. They are Neil Sparkes and Count Dubulah (nowadays known as Nick Page), founder members of Transglobal Underground whose music together was on the much more dubby side. The elements of their production can be heard all over LDA v the Lunatics, but they don’t steamroller it – every sound that they add is in harmony with the band’s groove, only serving to accentuate their musical message rather than turning it into something it’s not trying to be.

But enough of the deep-dive, what is it like?? Well…it’s a total party, of course. This is excellent music for no-thoughts-required hour-and-a-bit of revelry. Maybe my thoughts are influenced by the fact that I’m writing this on the evening of the hottest day of the year so far, but this is proper cider in the park music. Even when its themes are serious (‘Resistencia’, for example, features a speech by revolutionary Comandanta Esther), it doesn’t become dry, it just adds more passion to the music, and more fuel to the party fire. And then there’s just the straight up bangers like the two covers (one Spanish, one English) of Fun Boy Three’s ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)’ with guest spots from Dennis Rollins on trombone and FBT’s own Neville Staple.

I’m not sure there’s much more to say about this one without ruining it. Want a punky, dubby ska party that’s totally Mexican all the way through? Play this, loud.

195: Volume 2, by Mariam Bogayogo

Mariam Bogayogo (Mali)
Volume 2
6 tracks, 45 minutes
Awesome Tapes from Africa

This is a strange one for me. I can never really listen to more than a couple of minutes of this album at a time. Nevertheless, I think it definitely deserves its place as a Good Album due to exactly that, really, just for how jarring it is to Western ears. Malian music is huge in world music circles and even in the mainstream in the West, in part because of how closely our two musical cultures align aesthetically, but this one is way out.

I don’t know much about this tape, but the comments section on Awesome Tapes from Africa thinks the original recordings were probably from the 1960s, when the singer Mariam Bogayogo was at the height of her fame. It’s hard to find out any information on Bogayogo online, so I don’t even know what style of music this is, but I know the accompanying instrument is the balani xylophone – the name means ‘small balafon’ and is the ‘pop’ version of the balafon, a version that does not have the same strict associations with the griots. So this is more of a pop style than a deeply traditional one…but that’s all I can find out.

But let’s talk about how it sounds. The original ATFA post describes it as ‘scary’ and ‘apocalyptic,’ and I get that. To my stupid ears, it sounds as if the vocals (of Bogayogo and her backing vocalists) and the balani players are playing in entirely separate keys. It doesn’t even sound as if someone’s out-of-tune, they sound as if they’re just playing two completely different – and opposing – sets of notes. All of their timing matches up too, so it’s not even as if one part of a multitrack recording was played back at the wrong speed. It sounds amazing, to be honest; completely unpleasant to my ears, but in such an intriguing way. I wish I knew what was going on here. On top of that, you have that standard thing of a very, very short melodic section that is repeated ad infinitum on the balani for the entire length of the track over which Bogayogo stretches her brilliant voice, but when matched with that mad tuning, the insistence of the repetition becomes really creepy, helped along by the poor audio quality and echo no doubt created through decades of copies-upon-copies.

See how long you can listen to this tape for. It’s such an exciting sound and a real puzzler for me. Please tell me if you know anything about this at all, but if not, just let those otherworldly tones get deep in your brain and mess things around a bit.

194: Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976, by Sunburst

Sunburst (Tanzania/Zambia)
Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976 (2016)
29 tracks, 108 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I enjoyed this album when I reviewed it upon release (or rather, reissue), but I don’t think I realised just how much I enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve cracked it out on the regular, as it fits so many atmospheres. I think what’s so cool about Sunburst is that the sounds reflect the African-soaked Latin styles popular all around the Central and East African region at the time (including Congolese soukous, Zambian kalindula and Kenyan benga), but there is much more influence from American styles than in any of these others. So you have all of the things that make 70s African music great – the jangly, interlocking guitars, the conga-heavy rhythms – but over the top of it there’s just layers of funk, soul and surprisingly heavy rock too.

This collection is everything the band ever recorded – just 29 cuts, including their only album, Ave Africa, a few radio sessions and some otherwise unreleased recordings. Not that much, then, and in fact, really, all you really need here is the first disc, which holds the entirety of the proper album; the second disc of miscellanea is interesting, but their album is the real fire. It’s so infectious, so dancy and so cool, complex enough to find new, exciting elements with every repeat listen, but simple enough for its execution to feel completely free and natural.

When you consider how accomplished their only release is, it’s kind of amazing that their entire life as a band only lasted four years. It’s sad that they only made one official release in this time, but they certainly made the most of it. If you’re only going to release one album in your career, why not make it a perfect one? Sunburst did, and now we get to enjoy it for the ages. Dance!

193: O3, by Son of Dave

Son of Dave (Canada)
O3 (2008)
11 tracks, 36 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve written about unstoppable harmonica-wielder Son of Dave before, when I talked about his second album, O2. His third album is, yes, O3, and it provides an interesting flip-side to the previous one. O2 was a raw, almost completely solo affair, and the sounds of his loop-pedal-enhanced harp-beatbox-rattle-voice combo are exactly what you’d hear at a Son of Dave live show; on O3, he breaks open the instruments cupboard, invites some friends over and has a proper party.

On this album, that core sound is joined by guitars, piano, organ, drums, backing vocals and many more production elements, and the music itself shows a bit of a move away from blues and more of an integration of hip-hop, R’n’B and soul. But for all these additions and changes of tack, there’s absolutely no mistaking the energy, eccentricity and electricity of Son of Dave. Because all the tracks are still based on the one-man-band set up, they all still have that live feel, and it all rollicks along with the same sense of anarchic musical adventure.

This album and its predecessor are the only ones in Mr of Dave’s discography to follow such a naming pattern, and I think the pairing of the two is really obvious. His other, later albums develop onwards in different and interesting directions, but these two really feel like two halves of the same extended record in terms of atmosphere and inspiration. Basically, if you checked out O2 last time I wrote about it, get stuck in to this one – you’ll love it just as much.

P.S. I notice none of you heeded my advice to buy Son of Dave’s book, We Need You Lazzaro, You Lazy, Greasy Bastard. Come on you wimps. It’s less than a fiver and it’s brilliant, just get it and enjoy it in all its bizarreness.

192: The Shed Sessions (1982-1986), by The Bhundu Boys

The Bhundu Boys (Zimbabwe)
The Shed Sessions (1982-1986) (2001)
29 tracks, 146 minutes (2 CDs)
Full album stream on YouTube

The Shed Sessions is a compilation of the early music of the Zimbabwean jit band The Bhundu Boys. Taking its name from Shed Studios, the recording studio responsible for these recordings, the album brings together the tracks from the group’s first two LPs, Shabini and Tsvimbodzemoto, as well as a bunch of other tracks that were released here and there, or not at all. This is probably the best collection of the Bhundu Boy’s work; after these early years, they attained relatively huge success around the world, especially in the UK, as one of world music’s first megastars – they even supported Madonna at Wembley Stadium. After this success, their music became closer and closer to the UK pop music at the time, getting cheesier (and, yes, worse) in the process. But in their recordings for Shed Studios, they were still full of life, energy and fresh sounds, with their mixing of traditional Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano) music, Congolese rumba and American rock’n’roll and country making an irresistibly dancey, sunshine-happy music.

Out of the nearly-30 tracks on this compilation, though, there has always been one track that stands out to me. While most of The Shed Sessions have that light, airy tone that makes jit such a feel-good music, the track ‘Manhenga’ is different. To start with, it’s actually a lot closer to mbira music than their usual fare, and to the angrier, more acidic musical form of chimurenga, especially with its very strong 6/8 rhythm (compare it to the track ‘Ndave Kuena’ by Thomas Mapfumo from 1987, which clearly has its roots in, or from the same source as, ‘Manhenga’). But there’s something else. There’s a darkness to it. When I was younger this track legit creeped me out; it’s spooky in a way that is hard to describe…but I’ll try. I think it may have something to do with the fact that it is musically quite close to their other stuff with the lighter vibes, the high-pitched guitars, the interweaving lines, the close harmonies, but the big difference is that it’s in a minor key as opposed to the otherwise consistent major of the rest of their oeuvre. And that slight change of scale turns it all on its head. The guitars that usually sound jangly instead feel paper-thin and fragile, the endless repeating of phrases and riffs that usually sounds so jubilant instead feels claustrophobic. Even Biggie’s shrill whistling adds a creepiness rather than jollity. It’s unlike any other track on this album, and in The Bhundu Boy’s recording career, as far as I’ve heard. It doesn’t freak me out as much as it did, but it makes me feel things that I don’t expect to feel from their music, and that’s surely a sign of a very special piece.

191: One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar, by Various Artists

Various Artists
One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar (2006)
21 tracks, 129 minutes (2 CDs)
(incomplete) Spotify playlist

Momo’s is a Moroccan restaurant in London, just off Regent Street. Despite the London-Morocco connection, as far as I can tell there is no relation to the MoMo that we covered a couple of weeks ago (doesn’t seem like a coincidence though, does it? Hmm). The food is good, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve got a load of money that you don’t want for some reason: it’s pricey. But for a long time it was also one of the hottest venues for live music in the city.

It was made more exciting by the lack of signage. You walk into this posh restaurant but turn immediately left, through an archway and down some stairs, then along a long-ish corridor and through a heavy, unmarked door…and you’re in the Kemia Bar! And it’s gorgeous: low, vaulted ceiling; dim, warm lighting in reds and golds and through patterned shades; decorated like a Bedouin’s tent. Already an amazing location, but then you add in the amazing music. The Kemia Bar played host to the best roots-based musicians from across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, all in this cosy, intimate environment. They even provided the UK debuts for artists such as Amadou & Mariam, Mahmoud Ahmed, Tinariwen, Mariza and Seu Jorge among others.

Unfortunately, as all things seem to, the Kemia Bar concerts stopped in 2013. But before that happened, they released a handful of compilation albums that aimed to get across the atmosphere of the Kemia Bar, so that you could enjoy it in your own space. One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar is the best of them. Across two discs, there’s a remarkable range of styles going on, but they all contribute to a whole that is fresh and exciting, upbeat but chilled and rather sophisticated too. Just listening to this mix makes the air slightly perfumed. There is a bit of a Spanish tinge to the first disc (my favourite of the two), with lovely pieces from Radio Tarifa, Ojos de Brujo and Trüby Trio featuring Buika, but then there’s also intense spoken word from Ursula Rucker, UK hip-hop from Ty featuring Roots Manuva, and a remix of Ethiopian singer Gigi. The second disc goes in a more electronica direction, perhaps more suitable for later-night dancing than the lounge atmosphere of the first CD, but with just as much variety; the highlight here is a smart remix of Césaria Évora’s ‘Angola’ by Carl Craig.

The Kemia Bar is much missed on the London scene, and its absence turns Momo’s from a haven for top-class international music to just another overpriced bougie restaurant. If anyone knows of any similarly cool venues around the city now, please do let me know – until then, I’ll just have to make do with a tagine, some incense and One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar.

190: Lyubov’ Svyataya, by Doros

Doros (Russia)
Lyubov’ Svyataya (2004)
22 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The music of the male voice chamber choir Doros is worth listening to for many reasons. A cappella music has the ability to be so powerful, touching in with our most primal brains in a way that instruments don't quite manage to. On top of that, their music is religious and represents a faith we hear relatively little about in this corner of the world: they are one of the premier groups performing sacred Russian Orthodox music today, to the point where they regularly perform in St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Their mix of incredibly precise harmony and complex polyphony shows them as true masters of the art of the voice.

But as interesting, worthy and musically stimulating as all these points are, it's not what brings me back to listening to Doros' album. Instead it's for just one of their number: the okavist. I saw the group perform as part of an evening of sacred musics a few years ago in Berlin, and it was the first time I’d ever even heard of an oktavist, let alone heard one sing. For the uninitiated, an oktavist is a singer whose voice is an octave below a baritone. That is very, very low. So low it sounds inhuman, creating more of an otherworldly rumble than clear tones. It is absolutely mindboggling, and chest-quivering too.

When Doros sing as a full septet, they sound like a mighty church organ, with every layer of pitch accounted for. You should definitely give them a listen; you may be transported to a higher plane, you may hear angels dancing between the harmonies, or, at least, you may hear a human sound quite unlike you've ever heard before.

189: Approximate Hellhound vs the Monkey Demon, by the Reid Paley Trio

Reid Paley Trio (USA)
Approximate Hellhound vs the Monkey Demon (2007)
10 tracks, 31 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Reid Paley is a man who laughs in the face of life's unrelenting ugliness. He sings about deep, complicated emotions but he makes it sound like a laugh, or at least a great excuse to rock around and smash things. Because for those complicated emotions he has an uncomplicated sound. For this album, his band is just a lo-fi trio of electric guitar, bass (both double and guitar) and a small drum kit, and they play together loosely. Together with the album's production, it feels so intimate and intense, giving the real feel of being in a small, dingey and smoke-filled bar.

Paley's is a style that is a bit harder to describe. The elements are easy to hear – blues, rock'n'roll, grunge, country, a slight Tom Waits jazz to it, an occasional Bob Dylan-esque turn-of-phrase – but just listing them doesn't really give an indication of the end result. There's some alchemy going on in the process that turns all of these iconic styles into one that it all his own. A lot of it is down to his personality, and the personality of his voice, which is gravelly and gruff. It's obviously a perfect fit for the louder, angrier and bluesier pieces ('Everything is Going Wrong (and That's Alright)', 'Yr Polish Uncle'), but it also provides a really nice, even intriguing, juxtaposition during the softer, more thoughtful songs ('Roses Red and Violets Black and Blue', 'The Dark Sky'). And then of course you get double the fun when he mixes up the both on tracks like 'Stay Awhile' and 'See You Again'.

At first I was a bit disappointed at the length of the album, but I've come to realise the genius of that. There's no dearth of songs on here, it's just that in true punk fashion, none of them stick around for very long – most don't reach the three-minute mark. But at the end of the album, it still feels like a full meal; you've gone on an interesting musical journey, and back in time for tea.

Approximate Hellhound is an album I got when it first came out and that I keep coming back to, and I'm sure I will for a long time. It's a shame Paley’s never made it over to the UK since I've been able to get into 18+ venues. In fact, this was his last solo album to date; he made one more in a duo with Pixies' Frank Black in 2011, but after that, seems to have drifted away from music. I really hope he finds his way back there eventually, so that we may hear more of his simple, complicated, heavy, soft and kinda crazy songs.

188: Buena Vista Social Club, by Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club (Cuba)
Buena Vista Social Club (1997)
14 tracks, 60 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

If there is ever a case for naming a single legendary album of the world music era, surely Buena Vista Social Club must be it, or at least high in the running. Years ago, when Songlines magazine printed a world music chart based purely on record sales, this album was in the top ten every single month. That's impressive enough as it is before you take into account that this was more than 10 years after the record was first released, such was its awesome and enduring popularity.

So what is it? Quite a simple premise, actually: get a whole roomful of Cuba's greatest musicians and singers from yesteryear (many of whom had fallen into obscurity or given up music entirely) and get them to record one more album. Add some star-power in the form of American roots revivalist Ry Cooder that's, apparently, a recipe for success. As much as it is impossible to overstate Buena Vista Social Club's success, it's also hard to argue that it's not entirely deserved. A lot of the world's hugest (and especially the most unexpected) successes are somewhat dubious musically – and quite naturally, having to appeal, as they do, to the lowest common denominator across many different cultures internationally. This album defies that, and gloriously.

The music here is in the style of 1950s son (which would come to be known as salsa after its move to the US), but also including old-style boleros, trovas and cha-cha-chás. Perhaps reflecting the musicians' long and varied careers, there's also a lot of jazz influence in the sound, especially from Reubén González' piano. Every one of the songs on Buena Vista Social Club have become standard repertoire in Cuban music, and even in Spanish-language music around the world regardless of style. This can even be to a somewhat harmful degree: I've never been, but apparently it's quite impossible to traverse the streets of Havana without hearing enough versions of 'Chan Chan' as to never want to hear it again.

Buena Vista Social Club did amazing things for Cuban music on the international scene. As well as making huge – and very, very rich – stars of its musicians such as Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Reubén González, Omara Portuondo, Orlando 'Cachaíto' Lopez and Eliades Ochoa, it gave the world a real taste for Cuban music in both this old style and the new, which it continues to feel today. And with an album as perfect as this, that's not really too much of a surprise.

187: American Idiot, by Green Day

Green Day (USA)
American Idiot (2004)
13 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Much like yesterday's album, this is one that I came to as a teenager that didn't make me as cool as I thought it did. Unlike yesterday's, I can't really remember where I came across this one. Maybe I saw them on telly, Later…with Jools Holland or something, or maybe one of my friends put me on to them, I'm not sure. Whichever way, this wasn't music I usually listened to. I'd had some exposure to 70s British punk as part of standard cultural consciousness, but Green Day were the first band of the American punk lineage that I really got to grips with.

I think American Idiot is a real teenage album, and considering it came out when I was 13, it got me at exactly the right time. This music felt so raw, energetic and exciting, and even quite subversive. Maybe this was my chance to be a rebel properly for once! Or at least it was until I mentioned it to my parents and my dad said 'oh yeah, Green Day, they're good them, your brother used to play them a lot about 10 years ago.' GOD, dad you’re so lame.

Anyway, I still loved it. A lot of the songs, especially the most famous in 'American Idiot' and 'Holiday', are angry-political in an uncomplicated and non-nuanced way that is very appealing for kids who are just about becoming politically aware: they seem to have a deeper purpose than the impotent anger of classic punk ('Anarchy in the UK', 'Boredom', 'Pretty Vacant' etc) but without the need to be anything more than vaguely aware of world politics as it was happening. And then there are a bunch of tracks that are basically Teen Angst: The Soundtrack and I am completely okay with that – teen angst is a very important seam to mine.

What is really excellent is that – to my ears at least – this album hasn't aged a jot, musically. Yes, lyrically it's a bit childish, but the album is just as listenable from an entertainment standpoint as it ever was. There are tracks that are straight-up loud, fast and chaotic punk; there are slower, more weighty tunes; there are long medleys that ride a range of emotions and musical styles united by a common theme; there's even a piece based on a sample of tabla and tambura that is nowhere near as cringy as that sounds.

Much like I came into hip-hop just as my peers decided it wasn't cool any more, the same thing happened with Green Day: here's a band that has been part of the zeitgeist in their particular field for a long time, they release an album that I really connect with musically and emotionally and…well, fans of the band tend to agree that American Idiot was the turning point of Green Day, the album where they sold out for a more mainstream audience. Ho hum. That's up to them. As for me, I'll keep letting my inner teenager rock out to 'Holiday' more frequently than is perhaps dignified, but for a long time to come.

186: Boomerang, by Daara J

Daara J (Senegal)
Boomerang (2003)
13 tracks, 56 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I can't quite remember how I first came across Daara J. I have a vague memory of buying their album in an HMV, possibly on spec from having heard their name somewhere, but I also know I saw them on my 13th birthday at WOMAD as part of a strange 30-minutes-each double bill on the main stage with The Drummers of Burundi. I'm not sure which came first, but the end result was me listening to Boomerang and loving it.

I was thrilled to work out that this was hip-hop, and that I actually 'got' it. Hip-hop was always something other people liked that I never really understood, but this one hit me in the right places, even if I couldn't understand any of the Wolof and only a tiny fraction of the French. And – because that's how these things go – it opened my ears up to a whole world of hip-hop that I'm still loving and learning to this day.

It's not just hip-hop on offer on Boomerang, but those are the most successful bits of the album. The rest is more musically inclined towards pop and R'n'B that sounded dated enough when it came out, let alone now. Basically, you want to stick to the first five tracks of this one for the cream of the album, which goes noticeably downhill after that. But those five tracks are excellent. The highlight is the title track and opener. It's a rumination on the idea that hip-hop 'boomeranged' from Africa to America and now back. The raps in Wolof are at a blistering pace but every syllable is clear; the rhythms are exciting and the hooks from the then-young Malian singer Rokia Traore (who also appears on the track 'Le Cycle') are really beautiful.

Where Daara J are at their best – as they are on this album – is when they are uncompromising in their Senegalese identity. Their music may be born from hip-hop and doused in anything from soul to reggae to salsa, but there's also inescapable influences from mbalax, the sabar and tama drumming from the Wolof people and any number of other audibly Senegalese styles.

Of course, by the time I tried to impress the cooler kids at school with the fact I'd finally got into hip-hop (albeit in a slightly unusual way), they'd moved onto something else and hip-hop was deemed uncool now, and so remained I. But the joke's on them. I got to dig this great album that included African hip-hop at its best, and build a whole new taste in music from that point. They didn't. So nerr.

185: I Was Real, by 75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill (USA)
I Was Real (2019)
9 tracks, 69 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

If you describe it out loud, 75 Dollar Bill's music sounds as if it would not work, or that it will at the very least sound completely contrived: blues of the electric Delta sort (think RL Burnside, T-Model Ford, Junior Kimbrough) as if it was put through a filter of Steve Reich and Philip Glass-esque minimalism to turn it into extended, instrumental compositions. Sound rubbish, right? But it totally works! When you think about it, both of those individual styles are based on repeating riffs, small changes and discrepancies and endless drones. The biggest difference is the scales they use and the cultures they inhabit. And there's another musical world that fits that description too…

This is the New York duo's second album for the Glitterbeat imprint tak:til, and they've gone in a slightly different direction with this one*. In I Was Real, they bring in quite a lot of the sounds of north-west Africa, whose music is also based on the same riffs and drones as blues and minimalism; as such, it's a perfect fit. This album is permeated with the scales, rhythms and (most importantly) grooves of the Tuareg, Songhai, Hassaniyya and Gnawa peoples. It only adds too, none of the blues or minimalism is taken away.

I find 75 Dollar Bill's use of instruments and timbre interesting, too. Che Chen and Rick Brown play guitars and drums respectively, ably assisted by lots of multitracking. In the true spirit of minimalism, they deal in waves of sound, so when they introduce other instruments such as saxophones, fiddles or even the Moroccan guimbri, they're not immediately obvious. Instead they slot in, adding their unique sounds to the overall sonic morass and making sure its timbre and atmosphere are exactly perfect. Then, when it's all cooking together nicely, those instruments will step out from the pack to take their moment in the spotlight.

This music is meditative, quite slow but always growing. I actually find listening to it really exciting. You get accustomed to a certain groove, letting the loping and repeating rhythms get deep into your soul, but then there always comes something different. It could be so tiny, like the introduction of a new, short and wickedly-bent note on guitar that goes as soon as it comes, but it gets you like an electric shock. And then that will come around again and be built into that same groove, just waiting for the next tiny firework to come along. It's such an intelligent method that makes an equally intelligent – but not impenetrable – music. I absolutely love it.


* Although I do heartily recommend their first album on tak:til, Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, which was going to be on this blog instead until this album came out last Friday.