Tuesday, March 8, 2022
The 10 Best New Albums From Around The World (April 2022)
Featuring Gonora Sounds, Park Jiha, Tanya Tagaq, Talisk, Dawda Jobarteh and more
Gonora Sounds
Hard Times Never Kill The Vital Record
Gonora Sounds play in the popular sungura style, a contemporary variation of the rumba, chimurenga and jit; with an excellent female vocal chorus that has elements of South African township music. A wonderfully optimistic release of a vibrant Southern African music style... Martin Sinnock
Park Jiha
The Gleam tak:til
The eight instrumental tracks are presented as an impressionistic journey from night into day and back again, as we awake to the sparse and haunting tone signal of ‘At Dawn’, peak with the sparkling rhythms of ‘A Day In…’ and then drift into a sleep of dreams with ‘Temporary Inertia’. The result is serene, luminous and utterly gorgeous... Nigel Williamson
Silvana Estrada
Marchita Glassnote Records
Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada plays a host of instruments, but says she most often opts for the Venezuelan cuatro guitar, because its small body and warm sound suit her hands and sync with her vocals. Her debut album, Marchita, freights precisely that image, of a woman folded around her music, and holding in, while plucking outward, the things she intensely feels... Chris Moss
Knight & Spiers
Both in a Tune Knight & Spiers
Inspired by a line in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Both in a Tune offers music of the unexpected across ten tracks, a mixture of trad classics reimagined and fresh-from-the-box pieces that slip down unexplored byways and throw up surprising new avenues of exploration... Tim Cumming
Pelkkä Poutanen
Pyhä Veri Vuotaa Eclipse Music
The early morning mist rolls in across the water and pulls you into a hidden landscape; it’s enticing, haunting, mesmerising, spiritual and hypnotic. Pelkkä Poutanen’s first independent adventure holds true to a strong folk tradition while at the same time crossing genres and the global plains of sacred experimentalism. The album, titled Pyhä Veri Vuotaa (Sacred Blood Will Spill) lays clear its intentions and explores Poutanen’s interest in the personal experience of the sacred. She reaches in to the imagination to unpack the need for deities and the yearning for sacredness... Buzz Bury
Talisk
Dawn Talisk Music
Dawn, the band’s third album, continues with their dance-inspired sound which defies musical borders. This may not be to everyone’s taste, but there is no denying the superb musicianship and power palpably on show here... Billy Rough
Divanhana
Zavrzlama CPL-Music
A real highlight is ‘Peno’, by the late Šaban Bajramović, one of Yugoslavia’s larger than life Roma composers. More surprising is the sassy Latin style of ‘Opa, Opa’, by Serbian composer Radivoje Radivojević with Cuban-style piano and horns. And then there’s the beautiful original song ‘Voće Rodilo’ by piano player Neven Tunjić, which features superb Balkan accordion playing by Nedžad Mušović. Definitely one of the best sevdah albums in years... Simon Broughton
Dawda Jobarteh
Soaring Wild Lands Sterns Music
Dawda's kora playing is expansive and eclectic – classically traditional on the gorgeous instrumental ‘Sunset In Batumi’, rocked-up through an effects box on the title-track and jazzily syncopated on ‘Brikama by Night’, while ‘Admeta Harmony’ is a sublime and lyrical fusion of kora, strings and the sweet sax-playing of Chappe Jensen that is over all too soon... Nigel Williamson
Mitsune
Hazama Mitsune
Fun and eclectic, while maintaining a strong sense of identity, Hazama is a fantastic second release from an ensemble with an ocean of creative potential... Charlie Cawood
Tanya Tagaq
Tongues Six Shooter Records
One can never be fully prepared before entering Tanya Tagaq’s latest creation Tongues. Bold and experimental, the album is a fierce demonstration of how powerful and untamed the aural collisions between future and ancestral can reveal itself among many contemporary indigenous artists in Canada right now... Marc Fournier
