Ethiopiques Vol.4 (1969-1974) - Mulatu Astatke

Ethiopiques Vol. 4 is a compilation album by French record company - Buda Musique who specialise in world music. The volumes of Ethiopiqes are nearing 30 now and I'm planning to catch up on them over the cristmas break because at the moment I'm only familiar with this one which focuses on the work of Ethiopian jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke.

Mulatu Astatke studied in London, New York and Boston, has worked with the likes of Duke Ellington and brought back a funky latin style of jazz with slightly psychedelic sections to Ethiopia, where it takes on a slightly different flavour. Astatke influenced a whole range of artists in the late 60s and 70s.

The album goes through phases, there are happy tunes, wild and funky ones and some more chilled out long-winded progressive pieces, the use of guitar is very nice on this album and fans of Dengue Fever may recognise the psychedelic number Kasalefkut Hulu which the band covered as "Ethiopianium"

Tracks like Sabye are a bit repetitive but so funky with a bit of a Middle Eastern flavour that make you feel like a spy hiding in a Cairo alleyway just to show the contrast in tracks, the track which follows it - Ene Alantchi Alnorem has a distinctively Asian feel to it with a strange strong wind blowing sound throughout.

A pretty experimental album that might not be to everyone's tastes, it would definitely help if you like World Music or Jazz but it's extremely talented and I find it pretty enjoyable. Now off to check out the other 20 or so volumes of Ethiopiques!


1 Yekermo Sew
2 Metche Dershe
3 Kasalefkut Hulu
4 Tezeta
5 Yegelle Tezeta
6 Munaye
7 Gubelye
8 Asmarina
9 Yekatit
10 Netsanet
11 Tezetaye Antchi Lidj
12 Sabye
13 Ene Alantchi Alnorem
14 Dewel

Dengue Fever - Escape From Dragon House

Dengue Fever's second album Escape from the Dragon House is by far the most instrumental of the band's three albums so far and in some ways the most experimental too.

Where the album catered mostly to covering Cambodian greats and Venus on Earth had numerous fun English language numbers, this album has a more hypnotic sound to it. It includes the excellent song "One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula" which is a brilliant composition by the band with a real Cambodian flavour to it.

The song was my first introduction to the band when I came across it at the end of a series of "Weeds", this album has a great balance between long psychedelic rock tracks which take you into unknown territory and pop songs with catchy hooklines and choruses, even if they are generally in Khmer - they'll have you rocking out in minutes like a bearded bloke after a bottle of vodka in a Chinese restaurant.

I've really grown to like all 3 of Dengue Fever's albums and can't say which one I prefer, this is definitely the wildest and at times also the heaviest too. It's well worth a listen, some of their freshest work to date not that they ever become stale!

1 We Were Gonna
2 Sui Bong
3 Tip My Canoe
4 Tap Water
5 Sleepwalking Through the Mekong
6 One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula
7 Escape from Dragon House
8 Made of Steam
9 Lake Dolores
10 Saran Wrap
11 Hummingbird

Dengue Fever - Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever's first album is predominantly in Khmer unlike later albums this is because their singer Chhom Nimol's English was not good enough to sing in at this stage of the band's existence. The album has numerous covers from Cambodian Artists from the 60s and 70s, whilst retaining some of the Khmer pop tradition, this album is a largely azzy one with the amazing sax player leading the band's sound, whilst several tracks like "I'm sixteen" have a very Bambi Mollestors surf rock sound to them but generally this is not quite as much a theme as on the band's 2nd album.

There's also a cover of the Ethiopian jazz artist Mulatu Astatqe's "Ethanopium" which is done superbly, I love the psychedelic keyboard sound on it. Despite not being able to understand a single word on this album, Cambodian fronted Californian psychedelic band Dengue Fever managed to muster up an amazing debut album whilst retaining the psychedelia and cheesy popiness of Cambodian songs that can be found on albums such as "Cambodian Rocks" but at the same time adding a little extra talent and better production.

Chhom Nimol's voice is great to listen to but the whole band are wonderfully talented. It's a different kettle of fish from both Escape from the Dragon House and Venus on Earth but the chances are that if you like those, you'll like this.

1 Lost In Laos
2 I'm Sixteen
3 22 Nights
4 Hold My Hips
5 Flowers
6 Thanks-A-Lot
7 New Year's Eve
8 Ethanopium
9 Glass Of Wine
10 Shave Your Beard
11 Pow Pow
12 Connect Four

Dengue Fever - Sleepwalking Through The Mekong

Sleepwalking Through the Mekong is one of the coolest named documentaries in recent years, filmed in 2005 it follows the California based band Dengue Fever's return to their singer Chnom Nimol's homeland - Cambodia.

If you are not familiar with Dengue Fever, they are one of the most awesome bands out there combining 60's Cambodian pop/Khmer Rock with surf rock and catchy lyrics, writing songs in both English and Khmer. Sleepwalking Through The Mekong is far from your usual rock n roll documentary, it shows the band members as pretty educated yet fun individuals and tells not just the story of the band but also some of the background of the rapid decline of Cambodia's fine artists and musicians at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

There are interviews with people who remember the glory days of Cambodian pop and who grew up during the Pol Pot era, starving rather than singing. The band are worried at first how the Cambodian people will welcome them, foreigners bringing back the music of a golden generation of their own country may at first seem strange but by the smiley faces at the concerts - it's clear to see that they make many people happy.

Due to the fact that just about every musician and educated person in Cambodia was killed during the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia nearly lost it's culture altogether, fortunately a handful of masters who still know how to play their weird and wonderful instruments are passing their skills on through a particularly good government and charity run music school. The band visit the school and jam with them with both groups of people learning from it.

This knowledge filled little documentary is not just very interesting but also contains lots of great songs and breathtaking views of Cambodia throughout. I highly recommend it.

James Hunter - The Hard Way

My first album review of the day from acts that took part in Glastonbury and what a way to start it. I have to say my hopes of this album being good were quite low because R&B and soul these day tends to be a whiney high-pitched mess with dire lyrics and ironically no soul - James Hunter however is a complete exception and takes the listener back to the 50s and 60s with his simple but effective brand of old school soul.

The lyrics are catchy and sung with gravel, the topics are quite "sweet" and typical of times when artists sung about girls and common situations rather than trying to make things too complicated.

The music has a touch of blues about it and James Hunter manages to pull off a fairly impressive voice that sounds like a mixture of Otis Redding, James Brown and Sam Cooke with a dash of Ray Charles thrown in. James Hunter kind of makes you question why more artists don't sing like this today, combining melodic notes with a bit of gravel perfectly.

James Hunter writes the music that accompanies his work and then lets his band members improve upon it.

Carina and The Hard Way are my favourite tracks of the album and I'd say that She's Got A Way is my least favourite, perhaps because it seems a little less soulful and a bit more repetitive, there's not a particularly weak song at all on this album. I didn't know about this album last year when it came out but if I did it would have made it into one of my top lists of 2008.

1 The Hard Way
2 Tell Her
3 Don't Do Me No Favours
4 Carina
5 She's Got A Way
6 Til The End
7 Hand It Over
8 Jacqueline
9 Class Act
10 Ain't Goin' Nowhere
11 Believe Me Baby
12 Strange But True

Bishi - Nights At The Circus

Nights at the Circus is the debut album of London based Dj and musician Bishi (Bishnu Priya), it's something quite unique and I'm still trying to work out whether I like it or not. Bishi has Bengali roots and attends the Ravi Shankar School in Delhi most summers - this album is witness to that as she rocks out fairly powerfully and quite impressively on a sitar. It's not her sitar playing that I'm unsure about though, it's the vocals.

I'm not overly keen on high-pitched vocals as you've probably gathered from my numerous music reviews, Bishi tends to go for those long Bollywoodesque vocals every one in a while but also makes use of her posh British accent to try to pull off a sort of aristocratic style of rapping!

The sitar playing is well combined with electronic music, to create a crazy world music, electro, slight hint of techno and a hint of pop mash up! This albums inventive and even if I don't like every part of it, it's something that definitely deserves more listeners.

The main single from the album is "Never Seen Your Face" and my view of it suffers from the high vocals but I've decided I quite like it anyhow and it's a pretty funky pop number with a catchy beat and vocals that get better with every listen. A surprisingly Abbaesque song is "On My Own Again" complete with strings, sitar and accordion the variation on the album is something that never ceases to amaze.

"Nights at the Circus" - 3:57
"Magus" - 3:28
"I Am You" - 4:13
"The Swan" - 3:32
"Grandmother's Floor" - 2:38
"Never Seen Your Face" - 4:26
"Nightbus" - 2:58
"After the Party" - 3:20
"Vicious Stories" - 4:37
"Broken Creatures" - 3:28
"On My Own Again" - 3:50
"Namaste" - 4:48

Lay Low - Farewell Good Night's Sleep

Farewell Good Night's Sleep is the debut album by Icelandic artist Lay Low and other musicians who lend a helping hand. Working my way through the list of albums from this year's Glastonbury acts there are a surprising amount of UK bands that majorly suck. Despite being Icelandic/Sri Lankan the singer Lovisa was actually born in London - so maybe we can claim her, after all Iceland seems to have far too much talent for a nation of its size!

This is acoustic music, a mixture of country and blues but unlike so many of her contemporaries, she manages to pull it off with a soft, melodic and slightly husky voice that doesn't sound too different from Malvina Reynolds', she plays acoustic guitar throughout the album but is also joined by numerous other musicians most notably Magnus Kristinsson who also produced the album, he adds some absolutely awesome slide guitar to various tracks.

The tracks are gentle and cheery with some intricate guitar work to back up those wonderful vocals. Lyrically the album is a bit poetic and soft but it's quirky at times and will definitely appeal to girls in the way that Norah Jones did.

I think this is a top album and recommend you give it a listen and buy it!

1 I Forget It's There
2 By and By
3 Reason Why My Heart's in Misery
4 Last Time Around
5 On My Own
6 Farewell Good Night's Sleep
7 Why Do I Worry?
8 Days Have Been
9 Little by Little
10 My Second Hand Heart
11 Country Ballad