Super Parquet - Couteau / Haute Forme

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 181, October 2022.

Super Parquet
Couteau / Haute Forme
Airfono (66 mins)

Super Parquet command the confluence of Auvergnat folk, art and club music, creating their own unique soundflow. This follow-up to their 2019 debut is actually two complementary albums in one. The first part, Couteau, continues where they left off, with acoustic timbres of cabrette (bagpipes), boîte à bourdon (drone hurdy-gurdy) and banjo clashing with astringent electronics and effects, building up short ostinati into overwhelming textures with agonising dissonances and distortions, with traditional song cutting through here and there. It’s ever-evolving, ever-building and absolutely brilliant. It feels somewhat like a mirror-image of ambient music: its construction and impact are very similar, but its sound is anything but relaxing.

The relationship with ambient music gets much closer on Haute Forme. It takes the shape of a single 38-minute piece (split into two by the limitations of vinyl), starting with pumping, phasing cardiorhythms and screeching proto-melodies that eventually mellow into a wide-open soundscape. With another transformation, it becomes a bourrée macabre before this too dissolves into unstoppable, suffocating repetition until there is nothing but pulse and drone. Then silence.

For this double-album, the ideal listening experience is one of sensory overload and deprivation: play as loud as possible in a pitch-black environment. The constant looping can be brain-jamming. It fills the skull – Super Parquet’s music almost physically demands one’s full attention.

Rabii Harnoune & VB Kühl - Gnawa Electric Laune II

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 181, October 2022.

Rabii Harnoune & VB Kühl
Gnawa Electric Laune II
Tru Thoughts (58 mins)

As you might guess, this album is the sequel to the first collaboration between Moroccan Gnawa musician Harnoune and German producer Kühl, which came out in 2020. With two years to percolate their ideas, the approach seems to be ‘more of the same, but bigger’. Each of the 12 tracks has many layers of sound that give it a luscious atmosphere, like a jungle where different voices, synths, basses, beats, percussions, riffs and assorted beeps and bloops loom out from the denseness the closer you listen.

While Harnoune’s Gnawa roots usually provide some element of a baseline throughout with some combination of guimbri (bass lute), qaraqab (metal castanets) and singing, Kühl’s production builds from those foundations to take in all sorts of electronic dance influences. There’s a more jazzy edge this time around, whether it’s within the chilled lo-fi vibes of ‘Jilani’ or the get-up-and-dance remix-feel of ‘Aisha’. There are also calmer moments where Harnoune sings in a more classical Arabic style such as on ‘Gihaorba’, which provides a nice contrast.

As with the previous album, this project doesn’t come close to the intensity of the Gnawa lila ceremony, but it’s still plenty of fun for a light-hearted listen with a Moroccan flavour.

Johnny Kalsi and Hoghead, WOMAD Reading 2006

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 180, August/September 2022 as my contribution to the article 'Four Decades of WOMAD'

After years of extolling the festival’s virtues, we’d brought our mate Hoghead down for his first WOMAD at Reading in 2006. Hog is a rocker with a great love for anything guitar-based, but this was a completely different musical world for him.

That year, WOMAD staples and masters of bhangra-fusion The Dhol Foundation were a last-minute replacement for a band that couldn’t make it. While I was down the front, Hog hung back, never one for dancing. But I’d occasionally look back over to see him, mouth agape, gently shaking his head – the energy from the five huge Punjabi drums on stage clearly working their magic. After the set, the stage’s MC, the gentleman Neil Sparkes, let us slip backstage and we ended up getting a fantastic photo with TDF frontman Johnny Kalsi – with Hoghead grinning like a wally in his Motörhead t-shirt. We were all in a daze afterwards, our conversation mostly consisting of “wow!” and “corr!”. It was a magical gig.

What an honour it is to watch a mind get blown, experiencing intoxicating music that was otherwise completely new to them – and it’s something that happens all the time at WOMAD.


Photo: (l-r) the writer, the writer's dad Paul, Johnny Kalsi, Hoghead, backstage at the Village Stage, WOMAD Reading 2006.

Avalanche Kaito - Avalanche Kaito

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 180, August/September 2022.

Avalanche Kaito
Avalanche Kaito
Glitterbeat Records (41 mins)

When the first track opens with ominous flat thrums of a bass guitar that make way for dissonant synth tones, distorted noise and crackling percussion ostinatos, you know you’re not in for your usual album of West African griot music. Avalanche Kaito is the meeting of Burkinabé singer and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse and a duo from Belgian noise punk group Le Jour du Seigneur. The small set-up allows for intimate collaboration and a focussed sound – it feels as if you’re sharing a tiny, loud room with the trio.

Winse’s tambin (Fula flute), tama (talking drum) and mouth bow (as well as his ancient sung, spoken or shouted proverbs) are always the star of the show, with the Belgians’ harsh synths and driving beats aiding in the groove – albeit usually an unexpected one, full of alien harmonies and strange modulations. Like all the best punk, Avalanche Kaito’s music is confrontational and abrasive, but also playful and with a great sense of fun. While it lacks the overwhelming intensity of similar projects such as Ifriqiyya Electrique, this debut album certainly has proper party-mode chops. It just happens that the party in question is in a warped, alternate-reality Afropean noise dungeon.

Various Artists - Music from Saharan WhatsApp

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 180, August/September 2022.

Various Artists
Music from Saharan WhatsApp
Sahel Sounds (45 mins)

Sahel Sounds’ ground-breaking 2011 compilation Music from Saharan Cellphones opened the world’s ears to the massive network of democratic digital distribution flowing underneath the popular musical culture of Africa’s Sahel region. A decade later, technology has moved on and so have Sahelian music fans. Over the course of 2020, the label released 11 EPs of music sourced from Whatsapp. Each EP was available for one month only, with all profits going straight to the musicians – Music from Saharan WhatsApp showcases the best of that bunch.

The result is a snapshot of a wide range of tradi-pop styles from across Niger, Mali and Mauritania. All sorts are represented here – traditional lutes are plucked alongside microtonal electric guitars, djembé and calabash beat alongside drum machines. There’s raw Songhai and Tuareg rock, Mauritanian wzn wedding music, Nigerien synth-folk, and even the first Wodaabe guitar band.

All tracks were recorded directly into phones in a variety of locations and scenarios, and the sound is understandably lo-fi. While this adds charm to most tracks, some suffer from it, the digital artefacts and overzealously-applied automatic noise-cancelling getting in the way of the music itself. As with its spiritual predecessor, this compilation gives a great window into the Sahelian music scene as it exists on the ground – but be prepared for some variable sound quality.

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino + Justin Adams & Mauro Durante - Jazz Cafe, Camden, London

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 179, July 2022.



Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino + Justin Adams & Mauro Durante
Jazz Cafe, Camden, London
17th May 2022

It’s a logical double bill: celebrated Italian pizzica group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, and CGS leader and violinist Mauro Durante’s duo with global blues guitar explorer Justin Adams – a newer but nevertheless heralded formation. Both outfits were on top form.

The duo were up first. The contrast between silky, elegant folk violin and gritty rock-inflected electric guitar (echoed in Mauro’s clear voice and Justin’s growl) creates the friction that allows the unlikely fusion to spark. The two meet in sparse, contemplative atmospheres with deep emotional resonances. Mauro’s turn on the tamburello (tambourine) called to mind the bendir of Justin’s work with Maghrebi music, and showed the profound musical intelligence and artistic respect at play.

CGS upped the ante by several levels. As the group opened with solo zampogna (bagpipes) and four booming tamburellos, the audience’s swaying quickly made way for large pockets of spontaneous Italic choreography. CGS do have beautiful and intense songs, sung with full-chested passion and bringing to mind medieval cities and pan-Mediterranean cultural connections… but the fireworks really come when all seven members of the group – tamburello, accordion, violin, voice, whistles, bouzouki and dance – thrash out frenetic, extended, heart-pounding pizzicas, whipping the crowd into a rhythm frenzy of sweat and limbs reminiscent of many a mystical ecstatic trance.

The joy and relief of the return of live music is still palpable and acts like a halo around artists and audience alike, filling souls and moving bodies. It was the warmest day of the year so far outside, and inside the Jazz Cafe, it was positively sweltering.


Photo: Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, by Vincenzo de Pinto.

Vieux Farka Touré - Les Racines

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 179, July 2022.

Vieux Farka Touré
Les Racines
World Circuit Records (47 mins)

As the son of one of the world’s greatest ever musicians, it’s understandable that Vieux Farka Touré has spent his career making increasingly adventurous albums and collaborations to step out of his father Ali’s shadow. He accomplished that – now he returns to the source. The results are simply outstanding.

The direction of Les Racines (The Roots) is clear from its first few seconds. Twanging Saharan guitar, earthy ngoni, calabash and karinyan (iron scraper) keeping a grooving 6/8 time over one delicious chord – we’re back in deep Songhai territory, and this is Songhai blues at its finest. There are some big-name Malian guests – Amadou Bagayoko on guitar, Cheick Tidiane Seck on organ and Madou Sidiki Diabaté on kora – but there are no frills here. It’s all in service to the roots and it all gravitates around the heady riffs and solos of Vieux’s guitar, spiralling into the past while roaring resolutely in the present.

Vieux has embraced his role as Ali’s musical heir while retaining his own voice – in doing so he’s created a classic. This is an album that may well compel you to scrunch up your face and let forth a guttural blues howl in public – don’t say I didn’t warn you.