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Reviews

Review of Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book

Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book

Ella Hanshaw

Spinster

Rating: ★★★

Growing up in West Virginia in the 1930s and 40s, this singer-songwriter, while listening to the likes of Merle Haggard...

Reviewed by Mark Sampson in issue: July/2025

Review of Hawalat

Hawalat

Charif Megarbane

Top of the World

Habibi Funk

Rating: ★★★★

It’s been hard keeping track of the work of Charif Megarbane. The Lebanese composer and multi-instrumentalist has released dozens of...

Reviewed by Paul Bowler in issue: July/2025

Review of Scenes from uniXia

Scenes from uniXia

boci

Tree Being Records

Rating: ★★★★

boci describes her second, even more esoteric, album as a psycho-magical concept set in her own world, uniXia: “During a...

Reviewed by Tom Newell in issue: July/2025

Review of Transform Me Then Into A Fish

Transform Me Then Into A Fish

Martin Carthy

HemHem Records

Rating: ★★★★★

Carthy celebrates his 84th birthday on May 21 with a new album that echoes, after 60 years, his first. Transform...

Reviewed by Julian May in issue: July/2025

Review of Teleology

Teleology

Peggy Seeger

Top of the World

Red Grape Records

Rating: ★★★★★

If this really is the final album from Peggy Seeger, then the great lady is going out in style. Released...

Reviewed by Robin Denselow in issue: July/2025

Review of Eilifð

Eilifð

Anúna

Danú

Rating: ★★★

Formed in 1987 by the composer Michael McGlynn, Anúna have become surely the best-known vocal group (he doesn’t like to...

Reviewed by Robin Denselow in issue: July/2025

Review of Cosmic Griots

Cosmic Griots

The Afronauts

Agencja Perspektywy

Rating: ★★★★

Consistently funky and smile-inducing multi-diasporic Polish band The Afronauts channel the classic Afrobeat sound of Fela Kuti, the Ghanaian highlife...

Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Dawson in issue: July/2025

Review of El Tiempo Quiere Cantar

El Tiempo Quiere Cantar

Pacha Wakay Munan

Top of the World

Buh Records

Rating: ★★★★

Anthropology and experimentation combine on this release by Peruvian musician-researchers Dimitri Manga Chávez and Ricardo López Alcas, who “explore the...

Reviewed by Chris Wheatley in issue: July/2025

Review of SEAUXLEAUX

SEAUXLEAUX

Louis Michot

Nouveau Electric

Rating: ★★★★

What more can you say about an artist who has all-out mastered his instrument (the fiddle) and taken home two...

Reviewed by Andrew Daly in issue: July/2025

Review of New African Orleans

New African Orleans

Alune Wade

ENJA/Yellow Bird

Rating: ★★★★

On his sixth album, this bass-playing son of a 60s Senegalese brass-band star sets out “westward [to] begin a musical...

Reviewed by Mark Sampson in issue: July/2025

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