Review | Songlines

Castelli

Rating: ★★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

A Filetta

Label:

World Village

November/2015

Followers of A Filetta, Corsica's foremost purveyors of ancient polyphonic traditions, might have concerns about their new album, given the changes to their line-up last year. And maybe they’d be justified, but not for the reasons you’d expect. The new boys have bedded in just fine, and the sound is immediately familiar. The material is another matter; this is a showcase for the choral group's recent projects, ranging from Shakespeare in Edinburgh and dance at the Avignon Festival to TV drama soundtracks. It demonstrates how far they’ve travelled with tradition, but it can also sometimes feel a bit distant. Among the adventurous harmonic progressions there's little of the soaring, searing beauty of A Filetta at its passionate best. The castles of the title are edifices of the past, and the group quote a rather melancholy phrase of Jorge Luis Borges: ‘deep down I am everything I have lost’.

However, there are no instruments this time; we’re back to a capella singing of the highest order. A few tracks boast a female voice on the top line, which varies the timbre of the previously all-male group. It may be A Filetta's disparate cultural encounters have shaped this collection, but perhaps we shouldn’t worry: like the fern from which they take their name, these Corsicans have deep roots.

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