Album reviews: Gossip | Lord Cut-Glass | Shostakovich | Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble | Borders Tunesmiths | Spirit of Africa | Dengue Fever

Published on Sunday 21 June 2009 21:59

GOSSIP: MUSIC FOR MEN *** COLUMBIA, £12.72

Proudly declaring their riot grrrl outsider punk credentials through the mouthpiece of a formidable white soul singer was never a problem for the Gossip when they were an underground sensation. One massive hit and many glossy fashion photo shoots later, with Rick Rubin producing their major label debut, it's a different matter. Music For Men doesn't really resolve that dichotomy but it does comfortably make bedfellows of alternative rock and disco soul. The dynamic between the lean post-punk guitars, the dancefloor-friendly rhythms and Beth Ditto's powerhouse holler remains a potent calling card but what the album lacks is that killer track to rival Standing In The Way Of Control.

LORD CUT-GLASS: LORD CUT-GLASS

****

CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND, 10.76

A new solo alias (lifted from Under Milk Wood) for former Delgados frontman Alun Woodward, who has created a gem of a musical persona and added tap-dancing percussion, brass fanfares, coy duets with girls and anything else he can find in the toybox to create an album which sounds not unlike an unfettered King Creosote as interpreted by a band of eastern European strolling players. Lord Cut-Glass is an advert for the benefits of playing exactly what you please.

CLASSICAL

SHOSTAKOVICH: THE NOSE

*****

MARIINSKY, 22.50

Shostakovich's satirical opera The Nose opens with an absolute riot of modernist cacophony dating from the experimental 1920s. The score is brilliantly evocative, highlighting the absurdity of a plot that centres on the ridiculous exploits of a pompous government official and his nose. The tale that unfolds, based on Gogol's short story, requires a cast of over 80 characters. In other words, this is not only a bold debut recording by the new Mariinsky label, but establishes its large-scale ambitions. The performance is spectacular, spearheaded by Valery Gergiev with his Mariinsky Theatre soloists, orchestra and chorus. The brazenness of the orchestral performance alone makes for compulsive listening. But there's not a moment in this double-disc set where the electricity switches off. If this is symbolic of future releases by the new Russian label, we are in for some essential listening.

JAZZ

EVAN PARKER ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE: THE MOMENT'S ENERGY

***

ECM RECORDS, 12.72

Saxophonist Evan Parker has been a leading light in European free improvisation for over four decades. This music here reflects that background, but also brings together improvisation with elements of composition, and integrates electronics into the evolving soundscape, all equally long-standing aspects of his work. The 14-piece band featured here is the biggest line-up he has employed in the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, and the music draws on a commission from the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. There are two works, the multi-part The Moment's Energy and a short coda, Incandescent Clouds. While his music has often been fiery and relentlessly energised, the focus here is more on creating intricately abstract weavings of instrumental timbre and texture. Listeners unfamiliar with the genre may well regard the results as so much meaningless noise, but the more favourably inclined will find much to relish.

FOLK

BORDERS TUNESMITHS: BORDERS TRADITIONS VOL. 6

***

BORDERS TRADITIONS, 13.70

The sixth volume in the Scottish Borders Council's Borders Traditions series breaks the mould by offering new rather than traditional compositions from a group of nine musicians – young and not so young – from the region, recorded live in a specially arranged concert in Hawick in March. They players are fiddlers Shona Mooney, Lori Watson, Iain Fraser, Matt Seattle and Innes Watson, flautist Martin Marroni, piper Chris Waite, accordionist Christopher Keatinge and harpist Elspeth Smellie. The music draws on a wide range of creative influences, including flashes of contemporary minimalism (Innes Watson's Aye Bean set) and sonorities and rhythms more evocative of Eastern Europe (Aye Bean again, or the Gypsies set). Others are more redolent of local traditions, and the musicians approach all of the music in a spirit of co-operation and shared communication.

WORLD

SPIRIT OF AFRICA: THE KENYAN BOYS CHOIR

****

DECCA, 12.72

Barack Obama and his aides have good musical taste: the classical players they chose for the inauguration were first class, as were the Kenyan Boys Choir, who are sensibly trading on their sudden fame by releasing this disc. Their story is inspirational: their leader Joseph Muyale gave up a well-paid job to devote himself to the choir, which he hoped would give the boys a better start than he'd had; it's now a self-run democratic organisation, in which members apparently vote each other into posts including prime minister, minister of labour, and "minister of media". Based in Nairobi, they sing songs from several of the Kenyan tribes, as well as from Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Mali. Their sound is warm and sweet, and strictly a cappella; their repertoire includes both much-loved classics and little-known gems. Among the latter are a Nigerian lullaby called Malaika (My beautiful angel), Kapchasan (a hero's welcome), and a Luhya song entitled Nudumbu (Obama Yanza Vutswa) which translates topically as "Obama, our first-born, be happy". We also get Homeless, from the Ladysmith Black Mambazo/Paul Simon collaboration, and the irresistible Nkosi Sikekel' iAfrika, the ANC song which became the South African national anthem.

DENGUE FEVER: SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE MEKONG

***

REAL WORLD (CD AND DVD), 14.76

We are so used to thinking of Cambodia in terms of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge that the palmy days of the 1960s and 70s have become clouded in the memory. This CD, plus its accompanying DVD with period clips, evokes the kind of music which Cambodian musicians made out of western rock: they may have imported the psychedelic surf-guitar ethos, but their voices have that quintessential charm which you find all over the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Dengue Fever includes a singer who once regularly sang for the king and queen of Cambodia, but the group is based in California.