Reviews

Weġgħat Żgħar

TroffaĦamra

What a surprise to hear an album sung predominantly in Maltese. Infused inevitably with Mediterranean influences, bolstered by perceptible Levantine,...

Reviewed by Mark Sampson in issue: August/2024

Lyric

Stelios Petrakis

Stelios Petrakis is one of the finest Cretan lyra players in action today, although he’s also playing the lute on...

Reviewed by Simon Broughton in issue: May/2026

La Candela del Río

Insólito UniVerso

Every decade has its new diaspora, inevitably spawning a new music that speaks to roots and the severing of them....

Reviewed by Chris Moss in issue: April/2019

Message in a Bottle

Ingrid Henderson

Opening with the comforting sound of waves lapping on a shore, Ingrid Henderson’s new self-penned album is a beautifully atmospheric...

Reviewed by Billy Rough in issue: December/2021

Viena

Värttinä

Having worked with Värttinä earlier in 2015, I had a sense that their new album was going to be something...

Reviewed by Fiona Talkington in issue: April/2016

Singing Ways to Feel More Junior

Luke Daniels

Since finding his solo mojo with What's Here What's Gone, praised in these very pages for repurposing the kind of...

Reviewed by Kevin Bourke in issue: Jan/Feb/2018

Varieties

Alma

Varieties opens with music that straddles British folk and baroque dance, before moving off in a very different direction: a...

Reviewed by Tim Woodall in issue: April/2017

Gnawa Electric Laune

Rabii Harnoune & VB Kühl

This is an album that has me very much in two minds. It's a fusion of Gnawa music from Morocco...

Reviewed by Jim Hickson in issue: June/2020

Kofū II

Meitei

This is a fascinating album by Meitei that perhaps can be described as simply a sound collage of Japan, both...

Reviewed by James Catchpole in issue: January/February/2022

78rpm

Sheesham & Lotus & ‘Son

Like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Canadian trio of Sheesham Crow on fiddle and harmonica, Lotus Wight, on banjo and...

Reviewed by Nigel Williamson in issue: April/2016