Pucho and The Latin Soul Brothers - The Hideout - Milestone MCD9340

In contrast to Funk Fantastique, this has a really nice sleeve note: full of reminiscences from Pucho about meeting his recently deceased wife at The Hideout, a Harlem club where the band used to play in the early sixties, which was the hangout for the King of the Numbers in Harlem, Spanish Raymond. (You’d have thought he could have found a better moniker than that; even my father was called Ike the Lombard and he was English).

Oh yes, the music. The music’s great, too. Pucho is now leading a much larger band than ever before, with four trumpets, two trombones, one doubling on violin, the great Ed Pazant on alto sax and the usual complement of very rhythm. Lewis Hahn’s violin solos put me in mind of Africando and I found Hahn has played on the last two Africando records, as well as the last two of Pucho - AM

Misc. - Crunch time - Sender send042cd

According to People That Know, this is an example of tech-house. I think I'd be inclined to call it 'a surly mob of square-waves fighting in a sack' and dismiss it as just more of that technological music that they churn out by the lorryload in big factories along the Ruhr valley. However, one of the SIDStations is unexpectedly possessed by the spirit of Grand Funk Railroad and it all goes horribly right. There are echoes of fine old New York electro-funk and Man-Machine era Kraftwerk nailed to huge basslines that rumble along in the style of tanks the size of small villages while happy 'blork' noises that were last seen on old Joey Beltram records burble cheerfully in the background. The overall impression is that of a crowd of small robots gleefully jumping up and down on a pile of rusty corrugated iron.

Hot in Dakar 3

Assane Ndiaye spent many years singing backup to
Thione Seck. He has a voice which someone in Banjul
described to me, with perfect accuracy, as "divine".
If you think Thione has a good voice, Assane kills him
stone dead. His latest albums were Bagnal, a studio
album, and Takussanou Ndakarou, another TV concert
double K7. Assane sings in a slightly more traditional
manner than Thione, and his subject matter is more
religious than political. There is at least one CD out
in France, of his second album, Yone Wi, which is
very good indeed, and has a couple of bonus tracks
from the live album on it - AM

Allan recommends cdmail as a source.

John Lennon - Acoustic - Parlophone 8744282

I have very mixed feelings about this album. It's great to hear Lennon again singing some of his best and most acerbic material accompanied just by acoustic guitar. But it's a motley collection put together presumably to match the popularity of the "unplugged" format. The sound quality varies hugely and some were clearly never intended for release. However, "Working Class Hero", "Watching the Wheels" and even the live version of "Imagine" are worth it. "Woman is the nigger of the world" took a little explaining to the kids when it came on in the car, but their political sensibilities are developing fast.

K D Lang -- Hymns of the 49th Parallel - Nonesuch NNS798472

I've never been a fan of K D's before but bought this album, a tribute to all things Canadian, because I love good cover versions.(I also like Canada). Covers are a divisive issue. Bad ones are awful and the perpetrators should be shot for lack of taste and judgement. But good ones reveal new depths to familiar songs and allow you to rediscover what was great about them. Here, K D Lang reinterprets Canadian songwriters like Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jane Siberry. It works spectacularly well, only once or twice descending into the mush which has made me reject KDL in the past. This album forces me to acknowledge that she does have a great voice as well.

P J Harvey - Uh Huh Her - ILPB 143/986 639-6 (LP)

This made me think “so that’s where music is going.” Like many of her albums, there’s enough that’s familiar in the music to get your bearings but then you realise there’s something subtle going on with P J’s voice, the arrangements, the sound and you’re wandering down a completely unfamiliar path. And a good thing too, I say.

There are shades of the relatively mellow predecessor Stories...., like the single from the album, Shame, but there’s also some six-cylinder ranting and a couple of gentle tracks to end. The rough stuff really stood out on the first few plays but now it all seems to fit together. Apparently, she listened to lot of Russian folk music before the recording, on which she plays just about everything herself. Where next?

Charles Earland - Funk Fantastique - Prestige PRCD11030

This CD really pisses me off. First, I have, of course, no complaints about the music, which is some of the most sensational Earland ever recorded. However, second, it has the most awful sleeve note I’ve ever read. It’s not simply that it’s written in an excitingly pseudo-hip style; it’s also that the writer doesn’t know very much about Charles Earland’s music.

Third, this is a compilation of bits of three different sessions. The first chunk is from the session that produced Soul Story. So it’s obvious that LP isn’t going to appear on CD. The second chunk was recorded as part of the Intensity LP, with Lee Morgan. This could have been issued when Intensity, together with the two tracks from Charles III that came from the Intensity session, came out on CD a couple of years ago. And finally, the CD contains other tracks from Charles III; so that LP has now come out on CD, albeit spread between two CDs. Bah! - AM

Lambchop - Awcmon/Noyoucmon - Merge B00019G428

Two albums here, the result of a spell spent honing his song writing skills by band leader Kurt Wagner. His singing voice is in the same league as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen and the first album has many of the musings about life over a languid piano backing that he produced for Is A Woman. On the second, the songs are more developed musically and less laid-back.

On both albums, though, are some really cheesy instrumental tracks, which I suppose provide light relief but what serious musician bothers about light relief when he’s got something to say? Perhaps we should be grateful. Take out the instrumentals and you’d be left with one good album, albeit something of a “grower” as Lambchop never hits you between the eyes. Definitely haunting and not in a good way.

Hot in Dakar 2

Alioune Mbaye Nder has been around for a bit. He
started off singing lead with Lemzo Diamono in the
early 1990s, then formed his own band. He is
definitely the male singer of choice for young ladies
now. His work is almost wholly political, though he
did record a love song a few years ago. His latest
albums were Lu Tax, a studio effort and very good
indeed, if not as dynamic as Super Thiof, his
previous album, and a double K7 set, Takussaan a
Dakar, a great live album - AM.

Allan recommends cdmail as a source.

Al Casey - Buck Jumpin' - OJCCD675

I bought this LP in 1969. It was cracked right through when I bought it; held together by the label. But it was very rare. Over the years it has become less and less playable, and I’ve played it less and less. This is totally unnecessary, since it’s been on CD since 1991. So I just bought it.

There are two Al Caseys. The other one is a Rock & Roll guitarist. The REAL Al Casey played guitar with Fats Waller from 1934 to 1943, then with a wide variety of people from Armstrong to Sarah Vaughan. By 1958, he was in King Curtis’ band. He recorded until 1994! This album, made in 1960, is by the King Curtis band, without King Curtis, but with Rudy Powell, another Waller alumnus, on alto and clarinet. Herman Foster is on piano. Much of the material is Waller-oriented and swings as well as one would expect of these musicians with their background in swing and R&B. The highlight of the album is Casey’s Blues, which is one of the greatest preaching blues I’ve ever heard by a jazz group. Casey takes a gut-bucket solo, followed by Powell, who preaches the dead up from the grave, and Foster who takes one of his normal explosive solos - AM

Rival Blogs

Yes, we do have competition out there you know. One of my favourites is this one from a guy called Simon Waldman who calls himself "50 quid bloke" - apparently CD shops are now kept in business by middle aged men who are happy to spend £50 a visit on a clutch of CDs. Anyway, I like his take on things. Try this: http://www.50quid.org/2004/11/czars_filling_t.html

Or you can try this site which is dedicated to the much missed and lamented John Peel. The bands featured here and their record companies have donated these songs, featured by John in his radio shows, for playing for free on the web (tho not as it says for download).... we can still enjoy his eclecticism...

http://www.radio.plus.com/

Hot in Dakar 1 - Music From Senegal

Fatou Laobe is a new singer. She sings traditional
music and has one of the most leather-throated voices
I've ever heard. She would fit right into a 1940s
Gospel quartet. This makes her completely different
from Wolof singers, whose voices are flat (ie hardly
any vibrato or melisma). Fatou is Puular. She has made
three albums, the second of which, Hommage a Tidiane
Anne, is very traditional praise singing with
traditional instrumentation. The other two, Fatou
Laobe and Labat, have an electric band which goes
like mad and both albums are total dynamite
throughout - AM

Allan recommends cdmail as a source. More from Senegal shortly.

The Necks - Drive By - ReR NECKS3

Something from the Antipodes. The Necks are a Sydney trio using drum, bass and keyboards and a selection of found sounds. On this album, they lay down a rhythm, put a melody over the top, play around with it, introduce some noises they made earlier, and then, more than one hour later, they stop. It’s rather like hearing Keith Jarrett in a deep, but contented, rut.

Perhaps not the album you play when you want to listen to something intently but one that you find yourself drawn to when it’s playing in the background as the textures and the atmosphere change. What is it? Jazz? Downtempo? Ambient? Who knows? Not, I’m reliably informed, a good one for playing to the kids in the car - “is the first track nearly over yet?” - and so on.

Lhasa - The Living Road (Toutoutard 0122-2-6)

Smoky, soulful gallic songs in French, Spanish and English from this French-Canadian singer whose family, apparently, are circus performers. Passionate and heartfelt, knowing and alienated. If Eric Rohmer were still making films about the modern multi-cultural generation this would be on the soundtrack. I realise that may not be much of a recommendation for you, but it works for me.

(By the way, I assume if any of us try any of the recommendations on here we'll add our views in the comments section?)

Ojos de Brujo -- Bari (KWCD 016)

Take a little modern flamenco, add a dash of rumba, a sprinkle of hip hop, a spoonful of funk, stir in some over dubs and the scent of the street and you have a spicy paella of an album. Modern, spanish, and eager to embrace. Favourite track - Accion Reaccion Repercusion, which I feel sure they must have performed on the Ramblas on a warm summers evening to an appreciative crowd fuelled by Rioja. Cheaper than an Easyjet flight, this delivers a real taste of the best of Barcelona.