Young Tuareg desert blues rockers Tamikrest follow up their critically acclaimed debut album Adagh with Toumastin.
Music always is a borderline experience. Especially when not only stylistically boundaries are shifting, but the centres of musical creativity are moving.
Continue reading Tamikrest on tour and new album Toumastin
It might have been the last night of the tour but as the Afrobeat message beats loud again, this was one not to be missed, as Gilles Peterson said earlier this year, “If you ever get the chance to see Seun Kuti live, you’ve got to go!”
Continue reading African Soul Rebels 2011 – Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 / Donso
Early on this year Gilles Peterson was proclaiming Donso as one of the albums of the year, so why has it taken us so long to take it to our hearts and agree with the Brownswood supremeo?
So if you can imagine giving jazz legend a 70th birthday party and got a load of his favourite International music stars to join in on ten of his favourite songs, The Imagine Project would be such a star studded present!
“The late, great Charlie Gillett had a passion for music”, Mark Coles, BBC World Service, June 2010.
Continue reading V/A – Sound of the World Presents: Anywhere On This Road
Another hot single from our favourite husband and wife pairing from Mali, the unbeatable Amadou & Mariam with a couple of killer remixes.
The tragic loss of Edwin Dyer’s life has shone a wholly unwanted light on the northern, desert region of Mali. It’s an area known to music fans for great bands like Tinariwen and amazing festivals like the Festival au Desert. We asked Tinariwen’s manager and regular visitor to the region to respond to the dreadful news of British tourist Edwin Dyer’s execution
If you were getting concerned that after the singles that there wouldn’t be much left for the debut album by Speech Debelle, don’t be as the Speech Therapy continues.
Spring has sprung and so once again a young (oh alright then, middle-aged) world music fan’s fancy turns to the theoretically incongruous but in practice pretty successful agglomeration of disparate artists that make up the African Soul Rebels concept.
Continue reading African Soul Rebels – The Anvil, Basingstoke (Live Review)
As Jeff Bridges might once have said: Rock ‘n’ Riti – phew! Put Justin Adams’s Bo Diddley-meets-buzzsaw blues guitar with Juldeh Camara’s hyperactive single-string violin playing and you’ve got one of the most exhilarating boundary crossing releases of the year
Continue reading Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara – Soul Science
Charlie Gillett mixes the well-known with underground discoveries, crosses continents, sifts thousands of songs, balances the sexes and blends contemporary and traditional on this year’s crop
Continue reading V/A – Sound of the World 2007 (Charlie Gillett)
With all the hype surrounding Tinariwen’s third international release, long-time fans could be forgiven for expecting to hear the lost desert album of Radiohead. Thank God it’s still the boys in blue’s trademark sound instead
Tinariwen are one of only two bands to have their own Minister of Propaganda. Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav is now better known for his MTV show where very driven young ladies battle to win his attention. In contrast, the rather more earnest Issa Dicko is
concerned with the survival of the Tamasheq (Tuareg) people. Tinariwen is more of a popular movement than a band
