THIS may be the first time Gareth Sager has put his own name to an album but music lovers of a certain vintage will revel in the signature post-punk echoes of his former bands The Pop Group and Rip Rig & Panic. Slack Slack Music is taut taut stuff wi
th a wild wild edge, from the unhinged tub thump of Me The Broken Stink And The Piccadilly Kid to the industrial-strength jazz punk of King Tubby In His Kitchen. Fire Engines front man Davy Henderson turns in a soulful guest vocal over the ordered chaos of Her Saucepan Is Rouge and, just when you think Sager has covered all his bases, he finishes with a feelgood indie instrumental.
ALI CAMPBELL: FLYING HIGH
**
JACARANDA, £12.72 THE optimistically titled Flying High is Campbell's third solo album but his first since splitting from UB40. There is no split, however, with the UB40 modus operandi: demonstrating an organic feel for Jamaican roots tunes on some tracks, then diluting the effect with clinical reggaefied pop blah, including a pointlessly insipid version of Britney Spears' Out From Under and the inevitably cheesy collision of a Tom Jones cover (She's A Lady) and a Shaggy guest appearance. Even the uplifting Soweto Gospel Choir and rapper Sway have colluded in this journey to the middle of the road.
CLASSICAL
HANDEL: OVERTURES AND SUITES
****
DELPHIAN, £13.70For an album of solo Baroque harpsichord music there are a lot of recognisable numbers on this excellent all-Handel disc. That's partly because the bulk of the works are keyboard transcriptions of some of the composer's greatest operatic (and oratorio) overtures, all dating from Handel's own lifetime. Samson, Saul, Rinaldo, Il Pastor Fido, the Occasional Oratorio – they are all there, performed with apposite aplomb and tasteful flamboyance by John Kitchen on the bright and wholesome 1755 Kirckman harpsichord housed in Edinburgh University's Russell Collection. But Kitchen never sinks to mere showpiece display. In every one of these performances – and even more so in the two bespoke harpsichord suites in A and G, which feature an earlier single-manual instrument – he captures the clean-textured spirit of the music, its flowing lines and natural rhythmic propulsion. But the shining glory of these overture transcriptions, and Kitchen's execution of them, is the skill with which the arranger – some possibly by Handel himself – recreates the fullness of the original orchestral textures. There are one or two questionable moments regarding tuning of the instruments, but not so as to diminish the overall enjoyment of a surprisingly interesting disc.
JAZZ
STANLEY CLARKE TRIO: JAZZ IN THE GARDEN
****
HEADS UP, £12.72THE opening composition on bassist Stanley Clarke's new CD, Paradigm Shift (Election Day 2008), suggests a kinetic cartoon rather than a sophisticated jazz trio, but soon settles into a relaxed groove that suggests he was well satisfied with the outcomes, both electoral and musical. Clarke is best known as an electric bassist in a fusion setting, but this is his second recent recording to feature an acoustic group, in this case Japanese pianist Hiromi and another collaborator from the fusion era, drummer Lenny White. The results are very pleasing, with plenty of variety. Clarke is in majestic form throughout, always commanding but never simply showy. Hiromi often recalls another of the bassist's major early collaborators, Chick Corea, and her soloing adds a great deal to the overall musical exchange. Several standards augment their own compositions, and they close with a more surprising choice of cover, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under The Bridge.
FOLK
SPIRO: LIGHTBOX
****
REAL WORLD RECORDS, £10.76SPIRO belong at the more experimental end of the acoustic folk scene, where the idioms of English folk music meet the strategies of contemporary minimalism and systems music. The emphasis is entirely on ensemble playing, in which traditional soloing is replaced by a constantly shifting focus on different instruments within the whole. The chugging, insistently repeating rhythms and strands of clearly folk-derived melody are interweaved in tightly arranged patterns to beguiling and often complex effect. The obvious empathy between violinist Jane Harbour, pianist and accordion player Jason Sparkes, mandolin player Alex Vann and guitarist Jon Hunt, which underlies that intricacy of execution is all the more impressive when you consider that the disc was recorded live in the studio, with no overdubs.
WORLD
JAYME STONE AND MANSA SISSOKO: AFRICA TO APPALACHIA
***
JAYME STONE, £10.76'THE world is round,' says banjo-player Jayme Stone, 'and things on it seem to happen circuitously.' This particular circle began when he stumbled on a fact which has long been known to cognoscenti – that his instrument's origins lie in West Africa. 'I became curious about what kind of music didn't make it across the ocean on slave ships from Mali and Senegal in the 1700-1800s, and then I met Mansa Sissoko.'
He spent two months in Mali researching the banjo's roots, meanwhile Mansa moved from Bamako to Quebec City to start a new life. Musique recycle (acute accent) is how one of Jayme's friends describes this music, and this is apt, not least because the Malian kora riffs typically move in melodious, tumbling circles.
And the two national styles, which might seem unrelated, mesh beautifully, with the guitar and bass answering the calabash and Malian percussion in a sweetly complicit way. The resultant music feels much more African than Appalachian, with hunter-gatherer songs and griot melodies to the fore, but American fiddle-tunes also play their part. For fans of both Malian music and bluegrass, this CD will be an ear-opener.
INTRODUCING MAMANE BARKA
***
INTRODUCTION, £8.80 'THE last master of the biram' is the subtitle of this CD – the biram being a giant five-string boat-shaped harp which it takes two men to carry. The sacred instrument of a fishing tribe on Lake Chad, it has a rich, dark timbre, which, when accompanied by hand-drums and ullulations, creates a pleasantly heated ambiance. And Mamane Barka, a nomad of the Nigerian Toubou tribe, really is its only surviving exponent. He graduated to it from the more common ngurumi, but has developed a repertoire on it with lyrics going back centuries: theseing of bravery in battle, the beauty of animals, and the importance of the lake retaining its life-giving water.
