Album reviews: Gil Scott-Heron | Yeasayer | James Macmillan | Rob Hall and Chick Lyall | Robert Tannahill | Ramin Rahimi and Tapesh | Laxmikant Pyarelal

Published on Sunday 7 February 2010 21:04

GIL SCOTT-HERON: I'M NEW HERE **** XL, £11.99

GIL Scott-Heron, commonly cited as the founding father of rap, has been gone for some time, spending portions of the last decade in and out of prison and rehab, but on the sleevenotes of his first album in 13 years he urges us to stop and listen without distraction. I'm New Here is a mix of spoken word and song, delivered in a voice as weathered and authoritative as Johnny Cash. On Me and The Devil, he sings the agonised blues over an ominous trip-hop backdrop; New York Is Killing Me is a negative counterpoint to the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys' track Empire State of Mind, on which the protagonist's woes unfurl over a sparse, percussive backing. But he takes a more cautiously affirmative view on the hangdog title track, a cover of a Smog song, and in some brief meditations on his background, while the stately ache of I'll Take Care of You harks back to his 1970s soul funk heritage. Worth spending some time with.

YEASAYER: ODD BLOOD

***

MUTE, 10.99

WERE it not for the existence of fellow New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer's blend of percussive Afrobeat and 80s synthpop (think the more industrial corners of the Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears and Erasure catalogues) might appear a tad more original. Instead, it sounds like both bands have been swapping notes at the back of class. Yeasayer are the more wilfully oddball and synthetic outfit, though on the tribal chant of Madder Red, their contribution to the global party is more Lion King than Graceland.

CLASSICAL

JAMES MACMILLAN: THE SACRIFICE

****

CHANDOS, 15.99

JAMES MacMillan's opera The Sacrifice has never been staged in Scotland. Katie Mitchell's unconvincing production for the 2007 Cardiff premiere by Welsh National Opera (WNO) sold the original short, so there is a golden opportunity for someone, perhaps the Edinburgh Festival if not Scottish Opera, to create a new production on our own doorstep that gives more meaty treatment to MacMillan's well-constructed music and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts' text, based on an old Welsh saga.

Meanwhile, this new release by Chandos – performed by the original WNO cast and orchestra, but with Anthony Negus conducting instead of MacMillan – will have to do. To hear the music on its own is no bad thing, and the power of the orchestral scoring – MacMillan is one of the best orchestrators around – is paramount in this performance. Negus presents it in a vividly characterised way, though great chunks of it remain surprisingly derivative, even old-fashioned. The voices of Lisa Milne (Sin) and Peter Hoare (Mal) have a stronger presence in this audio context, too, suggesting that a convincing staging might not be beyond an imaginative director. Let this CD issue be the catalyst.

JAZZ

ROB HALL & CHICK LYALL: RHYME OR REASON

****

FMR, only available from www.robhallchicklyall.com

SAXOPHONIST Rob Hall and pianist Chick Lyall have developed this duo over several years. Their second album builds on the strengths of The Beaten Path (2005), and replicates some of the structural features of the earlier disc in its combination of compositions interspersed with wholly improvised interludes (labelled as Variants 1-4 here, and forming a sub-plot of their own in the overall construct).

Hall does not include his alto saxophone this time, but is heard on tenor, soprano, and the more rarely encountered sopranino, as well as clarinet. Both players approach the music with real clarity of purpose and execution, playing off each other in creative fashion. Their intelligent and atmospheric music incudes a couple of Celtic-influenced outings, Lyall's Rub of the Green and Hall's Pied Piper, and two movements adapted from the latter's Sonata for Clarinet and Piano.

FOLK

THE COMPLETE SONGS OF ROBERT TANNAHILL VOL II

****

BRECHIN ALL RECORDS, 12.99

THIS second volume of a project to restore the reputation of the ill-fated Paisley weaver-songwriter Robert Tannahill comes in time for the May bicentenary of his tragic death. Producer Fred Freeman has assembled some sterling performances here, with Emily Smith outstanding in the tremulous power of Gloomy Winter's Now Awa (complete with Beethoven-ish piano prelude from Angus Lyon) and the lesser-known Grey Pinioned Lark, while emerging singer Lucy Pringle gives a dramatically taut delivery of the Fragment of a Scottish Ballad.

Among their male counterparts, Nick Keir gives a stately rendition of Brave Lewie Roy before its perhaps unnecessary switch in tempo, Jim Malcolm is in characteristically lilting fettle, while Steve Byrne and Brian O hEadhra are also in fine voice, the latter particularly in Tannahill's affectionate Irish pastiche songs.

WORLD

RAMIN RAHIMI AND TAPESH: IRANIAN PERCUSSION

****

EUCD, 11.99

AMID all the talk of war with Iran, we should remember this country's culture, most notably its traditional music. Those of us who passed the green-ribboned demonstrators chanting outside the Iranian embassy in Hyde Park last summer were struck by the sheer musicality of their protest: no British protest was ever so easy on the ear.

This CD lifts the curtain on one small corner of what most Iranians still proudly call Persian music, in recognition of its ancient origins. The tombak is the key percussion instrument: a goblet-shaped drum carved from a solid piece of mulberry wood, covered by a membrane of lamb or goat skin. It's played with both hands, using a variety of techniques in which the fingers are rolled or snapped. "Tom" and "bak" are onomatopoeic for the two basic strokes, one being low (tom) and played in the centre of the drum skin, the other high (bak) played on its edge; the resulting palette of tones and textures is extraordinary.

The daf is a large circular wooden frame drum, with metal rings round its edges; the darbuka and cajon drums, backed by the giant double-headed dhol drum, enrich the effect.

What we get here is a musical tapestry going back to Sumerian times, with Ramin Rahimi's Tapesh Ensemble proving more than a match for such celebrated competitors as the Kodo ensemble of Japan.

HOLLYWOOD REMEMBERS LAXMIKANT PYARELAL

****

CONF, 10.99

THIS rousing double-CD celebrates the work of composers Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar and Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma, who went under the assumed name of Laxmikant Pyarelal (or simply LP), and were India's most successful music directors of the second half of the 20th century.

The instrumentalists here include a pantheon of greats, as do the voices, led by the inimitable Lata Mangeshkar.