This week sees the release of Broadcaster‘s new album featuring Peggy Seeger – Folksploitation – and the next 10 albums in the Real World Gold reissue series.
Broadcaster featuring Peggy Seeger – Folksploitation (Red Grape Records)
It’s been a while since Primary Transmission, Broadcaster’s beguiling debut that revisited the Radio Ballads, fitting them up with new sonic architecture by way of beats and other bedroom boffinary, beloved of the sampling generation. It sort of did for the English Trad. Arr. what Moby had done to Alan Lomax’s field recordings, except it was neatly based on the radio broadcasts that were already a ground-breaking, adventurous sound collage. Many traditionalists will have turned a cold shoulder, harrumphed into their beverage or cocked-a-snook in its general direction, but for those of more adventurous palate, or coming from a different angle of approach, it had something. Indeed it scooped a rare full house of BBC Radio 1-6 exposure.
Folksploitation repeats the trick but places the venerable Peggy Seeger at the centre of the action, who it seems was more than game to join in. Again it neatly revisits her back pages to draw on songs about drugs, guns, crime and punishment, thus linking the past with present concerns. But what it does spectacularly well is re-imagine Ewan MacColl’s ode to Peggy, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and his fun Space Girl, both of which buff up splendidly, sowing seeds that will hopefully inspire further explorations of folk’s rich history. [Reviewed by Simon]
Real World Gold Series 2
Afro Celt Sound System – Volume 3: Further In Time
The band’s third album , where “African, Irish and Welsh traditions blaze into a future informed by pop craft, rock power and dance euphoria” featuring over 20 guests including vocalists Robert Plant and Peter Gabriel.
Kenyan singer-songwriter Ayub Ogada’s only album for the label, a collection of heart-warming songs self-accompanied on the East African lyre known as the nyatiti.
The Blind Boys of Alabama – Spirit Of The Century
The gospel group’s first album for Real World, backed by a stellar cast of musicians including Ben Harper, Charlie Musselwhite, Danny Thompson and John Hammond.
Joseph Arthur – Come To Where I’m From
Produced by T-Bone Burnett, the second album for Real World by US singer-songwriter Joesph Arthurs – “a dense, attractively claustrophobic record, full of delightful contradictions: unnerving and reassuring, raw and yet meticulously compiled”.
Joseph Arthur – Junkyard Hearts
Reissued for the first time as a 2-cd set, this material comes from a rare set of four EPs only ever available on Arthurs’ 2002 UK tour under the collective name of Junkyard Hearts.
An uplifting album that reflects the seven months of hardship that Maryam and her five children experienced while fleeing her native Somalia, yet succeeds in being both “positive and downright funky”.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook – Night Song
The soulful sequel to 1990′s classic Nusrat album Mustt Mustt which finds sublime Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat reunited with Canadian musician and producer Michael Brook.
Yol Bolsin succeeded in taking the voice of young Uzbek pop singer Sevara Nazarkhan and her country’s folk songs to a much wider audience, with help from Hector Zazou on production duties.
The voice that “soundtracked the birth of Zimbabwe” writes his songs of freedom as an exile in the US.
Yungchen Lhamo revisits the traditional music of her Tibetan homeland, also with the help of highly sought-after producer Hector Zazou.
Listen to tracks on the Real World Gold Series 2 sampler below.
