Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Songlines

CLICK HERE Justin Adams, Guitarist, Producer and Composer, has been a chief collaborator with Robert Plant in his band, the "Sensational Spaceshifters". His production on landmark albums by Tinariwen and Rachid Taha highlight his feel for North African groove, while his award-winning projects with Gambian maestro Juldeh Camara linked griot tradition with raw blues spirit. This new collaboration with Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino violinist/percussionist Mauro Durante stems from a concert led by Ludovico Einaudi, the "La Notte della Taranta" in Puglia, where the two first played together, recognizing kindred spirits in the trance rhythms of Taranta. Together they create a raw, stripped-back sound that moves and mesmerizes! Post-Punk approach has been enriched by a passion for Arabic and African trance/blues, and Mauro Durante, a visionary inheritor of the Taranta roots of…

TOP OF THE WORLD PLAYLIST TRACKS 01 Onipa ‘Gbomo (Mtukudzi Homage)’ From Tapes of Utopia on Boomerang Records Ebullient mantras and darting guitar kick up this zippy tribute to Zimbabwean musician, philanthropist and human rights activist Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi. See p51 02 Susana Baca ‘Negra del Alma’ From Palabras Urgentes on Real World Records Afro-Peruvian grande dame Susana Baca gives this Manuelcha Prado tune a compelling makeover, her plangent vocal tones accompanied by some rousing Andean brass. See p52 03 Davide Ambrogio ‘A San Rocco’ From Evocazioni e Invocazioni on Catalea Vivid exhibitions of percussive pencilplucked guitar and lacerating salvos of riotous zampogna ferment wild Calabrian carry-ons – a trance-inducing, saint-seeking invocation. See p59 04 Sofia Rei ‘Un Mismo Cielo’ From UMBRAL on Cascabelera Records Argentinian folkloric traditions and digital…

After a virtual event in 2020, the annual gathering Mundial Montréal will return to the material world (albeit in hybrid fashion) for this year’s edition, which will take place over four days from November 16. Since coming to life in 2011, the festival has established itself as not only one of Canada’s most important world music events, but one of the most important in North America. As well as showcasing international artists, and the best global music that Canada has to offer, the festival has always been strong on promoting Indigenous Canadian music. This year’s line-up will feature Puuluup’s inventive Estonian folk, Swedish Sámi artist Sara Ajnnak and Turkish ud player Mehmet Polat (pictured left). There will also be plenty of Canada-based artists to choose from, a sign of the…

December 2021 (#173) On sale November 12 Sona Jobarteh – We speak to the Gambian kora player ahead of her Barbican concert about her forthcoming album Bela Fleck (pictured) – The king of banjo returns for his first album in over 20 years! Purbayan Chatterjee – The Karnatic sitarist rounds up some high-profile friends for a cross-cultural journey The Beatles and India – Exploring the Fab Four’s love affair with the music of India and the lasting legacy left behind Amsterdam Klezmer Band – Looking back over the group’s impressive 25-year career Introducing… Sitarist Tommy Khosla and Sao Paulo collective Thiago Franca presents A Espetacular Charanga do Franca…

Susana Baca might have been as famous as Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick or Diana Ross if she had been born in the US. She has a voice to melt butter, has filled theatres in Lima, New York and Havana, and delights jazz, folk, Latin and world music fans equally with songs that splice Indigenous instruments and socially engaged lyrics – which she often writes herself. But being Peruvian – and Afro-Peruvian at that – she belongs to a culture largely invisible to the Anglophone world and marginalised in Latin America. Peru was slow to discover her; she and her husband created their own label, Pregon, to release her early albums in the 1980s – on cassette, as vinyl was hard to come by. International recognition only came in 1995, with…

A man made of fire runs through a jungle; the only thing not in flames is his feather headdress. He smokes a pipe. He hunts. He swims, his skin covered in mirrors. ‘Natives born in the land,’ he chants in Guarani, ‘since the 1500s we have been at war.’ He shimmies through the sun-dappled undergrowth, focused and steely-eyed. ‘In the old days there were plenty of fruits in the forest,’ he raps. ‘But the white man arrived and destroyed everything that God created.’ He appears in the city, deracinated, dizzied, in the dark. The video for ‘Xondaro Ka’aguy Regua (Forest Warrior)’ was edited by a duo called Angry. The singer and actor is Wera Jeguaka Mirim, formerly known as Kunumi MC, soon to be known as Owera. He looks pretty…

Music has always been an important part of people’s lives in Bangladesh. Regardless of the theme of the song, various elements in nature have always influenced our songwriters. A significant number of musicians present nature and climate in a positive way; however, there are also many songs that reflect the influence of mother nature and the adversities it causes in our daily lives. The songs narrate the pain and sorrow caused by floods, river erosion, cyclones and extreme weather. In Bangladesh, 80% of the country is flood plain a metre or less above sea level. ‘In the mad wind, the mud candlelight is blowing away. Hey wind, please stop,’ sing the group Nogor Baul on the song ‘Pagla Hawar’. This famous song has touched the hearts and minds of millions…

Aigua Noninó Microscopi (45 mins) Lilting dances from Spanish-Belgian guitar-accordion duo Aigua is a duo formed of two contrasting life experiences: guitarist and singer Joan Peiro Aznar was born in Potries, Valencia and, after studying classical guitar, jazz and flamenco, has pursued a career dedicated principally to Spanish music. Accordionist Lies Hendrix grew up in Belgium, studied world music at the Academy for Music and Drama in Gothenburg, Sweden, and, according to her own press spiel, has sought her ‘musical identity [on] a journey through traditional flamenco songs, Swedish polkas, Valencian jotas and French bourree, all seasoned with jazz and musette waltzes.’ For this album, the focus is Aznar’s home turf, and Nonino offers us 11 gentle, lilting habaneras, jotas, mazurkas and lullabies. Valencian folk often makes use of the…

AMAMI Soleil Bongo Joe (36 mins) Filling dancefloors from Eritrea to Switzerland AMAMI are a Geneva-based three-piece who strive to combine dancehall, Afro pop and no wave. Soleil boasts so much; there are rhythmic and melodic nods to Gnawa, funaná and ragga throughout this wonky, leftfield collection of electronica. The opener ‘Highway Dehli’ is sung in Tigrinya (a language from Eritrea, home of the group’s singer, Gabriel Ghebrezghi) and throws the listener immediately into one of those strobe-lit underground rooms that we all miss so much. Ghebrezghi describes the song as ‘a shout from the heart… filled with joy, sadness, nostalgia and rebellio[n], as it encourages Eritreans… to [remember] where they came from.’ After an exceptionally strong start, for the rest of the album we’re sonically thrown around from city…

This November, Glasgow plays host to the UN Climate Change Conference – COP26. It seems like a perfect place to host the event – a major post-industrial city that boasts beautiful green spaces and is in close reach of the lochs and mountains of Scotland’s west coast. The city has set a target for carbon neutrality by 2030, and aims to be one of Europe’s greenest cities through its Sustainable Glasgow campaign. With climate change having a huge effect on our biggest social concerns – poverty, the availability of food and water, and immigration to name a few – it is the most urgent issue of our time. Naturally, the topic is becoming increasingly prevalent in artists’ work, including my own. I grew up aware of our need to protect…

Last issue marked the end of an era. After almost 20 years as editor, Jo Frost hung up her hat and set off for new adventures. Songlines is the magazine it is today because of her keen ear for a story and passion for the music of this big wide world. She leaves big shoes to fill. Perhaps it’s the thought of those oversized boots that caused me to dive headfirst into my new role with this special edition of the magazine. The world’s leaders are due to convene in Glasgow this November for COP26 to discuss the climate emergency and, wherever you look, the messaging is clear: we don’t have much time, our planet is dying. Greenhouse gases, ice mass and ocean temperature are all hitting terrifying new records.…

Kurdish singer Aynur Doğan is the recipient of WOMEX’s much-coveted Artist Award this year. Aynur, a Kurd and an Alevi, was born in Turkey and is currently exiled in Amsterdam. WOMEX state that they gave the award ‘for her long-term dedication to the preservation and innovation of Kurdish and Alevi culture, for maintaining the highest artistic integrity in the face of political pressure and, in doing so, for being a model for all that sing against the silencers.’ Aynur’s last album was 2020’s Hedur: Solace of Time, the first she recorded since moving to the Netherlands. Aynur says of the award, “I am honoured to dedicate this award to all women in the world in the presence of Kurdish women who are fighting for freedom, equality and peace.” The other…

Out with the in crowd In his soapbox [August/September 2021, #170], Chris Moss claims the cool guys and gals shun the mainstream music, failing to accept that David Byrne, Bowie and Lou Reed were and are the mainstream, and not very cool either. I’m guessing he thinks Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel are mainstream and – who knows – maybe John McLaughlin and Weather Report too. John Coltrane was incorporating Indian music before The Beatles started using Indian instruments as their latest novelty, but I suspect he thinks John and George were outside the mainstream too. Rock from the 50s (I think he meant to add ‘roll’) and 70s punk (I think he meant to add ‘rock’) were and still are similarly hyped all over the media. There will never…

“While I was theoretically looking for pythons, in the evenings I would record different types of music…”David Attenborough reflects on his time filming Zoo Quest between 1954-1963 My Field Recordings from Across the Planet Free gift offer with annual subscriptions Subscribe to Songlines for a year and receive a complimentary copy of the highly-acclaimed double album David Attenborough: My Field Recordings from Across the Planet featuring over 50 recordings of musicians made by Attenborough while he filmed the iconic BBC series Zoo Quest, between 1954-63. 2CD set +52-page Deluxe Booklet To claim your CD, simply use code DA21 at the checkout There are three easy ways to subscribe: www.songlines.co.uk/subscribe | +44 (0)1722 716997 | subscriptions@markallengroup.com *Gift special offers are available for anyone placing a new annually paid subscription order. Free…

“The climate is not going back. We are past that point. We can’t reverse this. The new warmer climate has changed the landscape and our food supply drastically. Inuit people will adapt and continue to do what they have always been doing for thousands of years: eat locally. Less fish or seals perhaps, but we can now think of growing fruits and vegetables!” As I kayak along the Northwest Coast of Canada, these words from Inuk artist Tiff any Ayalik and the realities they depict resonate strongly with me. Canada’s northern regions are warming three times faster than the global average and the impacts are evident. Canada is a country of resources, exploited and exported on an everdevouring global scale, and this is why the North is now the new…

Producer and filmmaker Tim Cole, was in the desert outside Alice Springs in central Australia in 2014, gazing up at a starry night sky, when his jeep radio began broadcasting results of the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Things were not looking good. “The steady loss of nature and culture to the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions was enormous,” says the Melbourneborn Cole, a former member of seminal Australian band Not Drowning, Waving, whose collaborations with musicians from Papua New Guinea including George Telek and work for a free West Papua (which remains under Indonesian occupation) were groundbreaking. Cole had been working with Indigenous Australians, recording their ancient songlines (groups of songs that pass down cultural and geographical knowledge and maintain connections and community). At the same…

“THE MELODIES OF THIS LAND” Çimen Yalçin has come to be known as “the voice that made Turkey shed tears”: She is an Artist of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in singing and her voice that lends expression to the many unique tones of Anatolia has become well-known especially for her singing featured in television series. Now, her first solo album “The Melodies of This Land” is being released by Kalan Music. “The Melodies of This Land” comprises 15 works, with songs and traditional songs performed in Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kurdish and the Laz language, and also Iranian, Armenian and Balkan melodies performed with new lyrics. The richness of Anatolia in all its breadth is thus reflected in the artist’s voice. The album was completed with the contributions of ten…

Abdelli Songs of Exile ARC Music (67 mins) Berber baritone returns after almost a decade Albums by the Brussels-based Algerian singer and songwriter Abderrahmane Abdelli are as rare as an oasis in the desert – and every bit as refreshing. His Berber songs and mandola playing first came to our attention when Real World released his New Moon album in 1995. He supported Peter Gabriel on tour but it took another eight years before the label released the 2003 follow-up Among Brothers. A further nine years elapsed before he released 2012’s Destiny, a beautiful set of bittersweet songs based on the themes of exile and loss. Nine years on comes this fourth set, on which he fuses Berber/Kabyle tradition with contemporary pop and global influences while again dealing with the…

Altın Gün Âlem ATO Records/Glitterbeat Records (38 mins) Psych-folk sextet makes the jump to electro-pop While Amsterdam-based sextet Altın Gün are known as 21st-century purveyors of Turkish psych-folk, their last album, Yol, released in February this year, marked a decisive shift away from the classic 70s sound, incorporating synths and drum machines for a more luxuriant, 80s dream pop feel. With this follow-up, they’ve burrowed even further in that direction with a suite of catchy tunes that pay homage to electronic pop music from the 80s and early 90s. A handful of original compositions clearly demonstrate the fun they’re having: the gentle reggae lilt of ‘Kısasa Kısas’ feels like the quintessential Euro-pop soundtrack to an endless, imaginary summer holiday. But it’s their imaginative interpretations of Turkish folk standards that really…

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BFILondon Film Festival, London, October 6-17 Wouldn’t you know it, real life, in-person festivals appear to be back – for the moment, at least. The 65th BFI London Film Festival has announced a programme of 159 features plus shorts, with many more of them showing in actual cinemas than in 2020, including nationwide via partner cinemas such as HOME in Manchester, Watershed in Bristol and Cardi_ ’s Chapter Arts Centre. The result of this is that fewer are now going to be available to view via the BFI Player, which smacks a bit of trying to get the genie back into the bottle, but this may be at the request of distributors rather than a preference of organisers. The festival kicks off with an unexpected choice, the world premiere of Netflix-funded…

“You could spend several lifetimes writing a global history of music,” chuckles Michael Spitzer. He should know, he’s just written one that covers four million years: The Musical Human. It is equally impressive because of its wide-reaching references and the ideas it expounds. And it’s not just about human music, but our music compared to that of birds and whales. “Music is such a rich holistic thing that engages every bit of your brain and body and soul and heart, that you need to chuck lots of tools at it from lots of disciplines. It doesn’t matter where you start – Beethoven, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Duke Ellington – if you follow your nose intellectually you will end up in the same place eventually, which is everywhere.” Michael Spitzer…

Catriona Price Violinist and composer Catriona is half of the folk duo Twelfth Day and a founding member of folk band Fara. Her solo debut, Hert, will be released in early 2022. Read about her environmental projects on p85. Mark LeVine Mark is professor of history at UC Irvine with a new book, We’ll Play Till We Die: Journeys Across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World. He traces the thread of Sufi music in Arab EDM on p44. Marc Fournier Marc is a music columnist and radio producer and host based on the ancestral territory of the Coast Salish peoples. He speaks to First Nations artists who are speaking out about the climate crisis (p34). Songlines was launched in 1999 and is the definitive magazine for world…

Here’s a fun fact: did you know that West African artists have featured on our front cover more than any other region – 50 and counting? That’s what our much-missed previous editor Jo Frost reveals in the introduction of our brand new special one-off publication, Songlines Presents… The Music of West Africa, which is on sale now. West Africa is certainly one of the world’s musical heavyweights and this publication is full of articles and reviews about the region, with specially-commissioned exclusive pieces on politics and human rights in West Africa, as well as our contributing editor Nigel Williamson taking you through the musical history of the region’s countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo,…

There can be no doubting the commitment of Scottish songwriter-turned-academic Mary Ann Tedstone Glover (pictured), who is set to release The Music of Ancient Rome, an album that claims to reveal ‘the secrets of ancient Roman music for the first time in almost 2,000 years.’ Glover had long found it frustrating that, despite some labelling their music as ancient Roman, no-one had actually done the research to find out what it would have actually sounded like, and she set herself the challenge of achieving just that. She found out where the music would have been played, what kind of people would have played it, what harmonic ideas existed at the time and which instruments would have been favoured, using paintings, engravings and texts by the likes of Plato and Xenophon…

Last month I was lucky enough to meet up with klezmer clarinettist Giora Feidman. He’s a fourth-generation klezmer musician but has never been part of the genre’s revival. He’s always been a solitary figure pursuing his own instinctive path with a stunning tone and clarinet technique. He was certainly one of the people that first got me interested in klezmer music over 30 years ago. “The real meaning of klezmer comes from two Hebrew words – klei zemer. The translation: instrument of song. All of mankind are born singers. This is a natural force. To express this natural force we need one instrument. We are the instruments of song.” This is what he said rather enigmatically when I filmed him for a BBC television documentary in 1992. I hadn’t seen…

“More wonderful access to fabulous music from Africa courtesy of Songlines” Jon Snow, Channel 4 news presenter The most influential artists • The essential albums • Limited edition SONGLiNESS Presents… INCLUDING MALI • NIGERIA • GHANA • SENEGAL • SIERRA LEONE FEATURING ALI FARKA TOURÉ • ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO • CESARIA EVORA CHEIKH LÔ • FELA KUTI • OUMOU SANGARÉ • SALIF KEITA SONGHOY BLUES • TINARIWEN • YOUSSOU N'DOUR + MORE SONGLiNESS Presents… THE MUSIC OF WEST AFRICA Now on sale at all good newsagents for £12.99 • 100 pages of stunning content exploring the region’s history, musical styles and traditions• Profiles on the countries of West Africa, from Benin to Sierra Leone• Over 170 recommended albums• Select features from the archives• Exclusive opinion pieces Around the World in 20…

Protest music responds well to immediate and tangible issues. The climate crisis is a different kind of challenge. Its causes lie deep in two centuries of industrialisation – and float in the air, invisible, microscopic, global. A degree more or less of heat, here; a dammed river, a new power station, over there; everything is connected. Its consequences are insidious, too, and complex, flaring up in apocalyptic forest fires and in devastating landslides and floods, ticking along like a planet-sized time bomb. How do artists react to this past and present? Can music find a language for the likely horrors and ordeals of the future? The following collection of environmental features puts forward a range of meaningful responses. Norwegian Terje Isungset seeks a bond with nature by collaborating with a…

My Zoom call with Sami singer Sara Marielle Gaup is unlike any of the many other Zoom calls conducted during the lockdown months. Within a few minutes she’s staring at me with fierce eyes saying, “you will listen and try and tell me what is this animal.” She starts singing, although it seems like the voice is coming out of her mouth of its own accord, as if she’s just the vessel for the inhuman sounds. It pulses forward and back, coming and going and then rises up angrily. A bear? No, she sings me a bear and it sounds very different. Less angry, more melancholic and rather more tuneful. Then she sings a rabbit, much lighter in tone and actually rather hoppy. The one I’d failed to recognise was…

Ségou, Mali, riverside. Old creaking lorries park near the place where young men dig up sand from below the surface of the Niger River. They dump the contents of their shovels into one of the pirogues (those slender wooden boats so ty pical of life here) that lie bobbing on the water. Or they take their load onshore and pile the sand up in small mountains from where it is shovelled onto a lorry. Once full, it departs, its engine groaning under the weight. The sand goes to building sites and road works. This scene repeats itself in every town and city along the river, whose waters are also abused as open sewers. In North and East Africa, the Nile receives the same treatment. But where the Niger River gets…

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Adrian + Meredith Bad for Business Adrian + Meredith (37 mins) Rogue folk from Music City Welcome to the Nashville living room of Adrian and Meredith Krygowski, where they and a few friends have worked on this dramatic album of Americana and ‘rogue folk.’ The name Bad for Business seems to sum up a lot of what’s happened over the last 18 months but is particularly apt for the music industry, and even more so for a town like Nashville, aka Music City. It also hints at some of the other themes dealt with on this recording; among them gun violence, the legacy of Donald Trump, immigration and climate change. An ostensibly country-rock sound is given more shape by interesting additions of Appalachian banjo, Balkan brass and surf-a-billy guitar. The…

Kutcha Edwards Circling Time Wantok Musik (48 mins) Heartfelt personal journey A veteran of the Aboriginal music scene since 1991, Mutti Mutti man Edwards has been a key member of several influential groups, including Blackfire and The Black Arm Band. He’s also previously released four solo albums, featuring his own brand of hometown ‘Bidgee’ blues, from the Murrumbidgee River region on the NSW-Victoria border. A member of the Stolen Generations (Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents by the government), Edwards’ music has always contained deep expressions of hurt and loss, but also equal portions of personal healing and redemption. With his strong voice and heartfelt delivery, his albums and performances are moving experiences. This new collection of songs opens with the anthemic ballad ‘Singing Up Country’, featuring traditional language…

Classical Brought to you by GRAMOPHONE Max Richter/Baltic Sea Philharmonic Orchestra/Kristjan Järvi Exiles Deutsche Grammophon Assured recontextualisation of hypnotic earlier work Max Richter’s recordings are often based on a central concept or idea – Vivaldi in The Four Seasons Recomposed, sonically induced relaxation and altered consciousness in Sleep, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Voices or a particular plot and storyline in the composer’s many film soundtracks. On Exiles, Richter approaches the idea from a different angle, dusting off and repolishing a series of largely independent pre-existing works then grouping them under the theme of ‘music as-journey’. Running through the album’s central spine is the title-track itself. Originally composed in 2014 for a Netherlands Dance Theatre production and written partly in response to the Syrian refugee crisis, the statement…

Raindance October 27-November 6 Raindance, Britain’s biggest independent film festival, is returning later in October, kicking off with a film that it was surprising not to find in the LFF programme – the UK premiere of Best Sellers, starring Aubrey Plaza and Michael Caine, about a retired author who reluctantly embarks on a book tour to help out a young publisher. This feels like a real coup for a festival that has been punching above its weight for a few years. raindance.org/festival London Korean Film Festival November 4-19 In November, London hosts the London Korean Film Festival at cinemas across the capital. Following Parasite’s worldwide success, interest in Korean cinema is at something of a high and this 16th edition of the festival is likely to be very popular, with…

Located on the north-eastern portion of Shikoku Island and boasting a population just under a million, Kagawa is the smallest prefecture by area in Japan. Though mainly known as the nation’s udon capital, it’s also a region of stunning views of the Inland Sea, rolling green hills, the almost 400-year-old Ritsurin Garden, and the lively but walkable city of Takamatsu. Although somewhat an afterthought among many domestic tourists in Japan, I decided it would be a good area to explore while escaping the ‘2020’ Covid-lympics being held in Tokyo in late July. Kagawa has been less effected by the pandemic than other parts of Japan, but still many events including all the famous summer festivals were postponed. Upon arriving I hit up a local friend, jazz drummer Masashi Tomikawa, who…

The Good Ones Kigali Y’ Izahabu (Dead Oceans, 2010) Where Brennan’s world music adventure started, with a collection of simple, acoustic songs recorded on the back porch by a trio of genocide survivors. The spare sound is both humble and humbling and possesses a strange beauty. Reviewed in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue (#73). Tinariwen Tassili (V2, 2011) Brennan was never simply going to repeat what Tinariwen had done before. Instead, this is the group as we had never heard them, on a back-to-the-roots, predominantly acoustic album with an atmospheric campfire vibe. Reviewed in the October 2011 issue (#79). Khmer Rouge Survivors They Will Kill You, If You Cry (Glitterbeat Records, 2016) Slow South-East Asian blues by elderly survivors of Pol Pot’s genocide. Stories of being child soldiers as well as…

“When I was about 14 years old I heard this recording of Ravel’s ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess’ played by Julian Bream and John Williams on two classical guitars. It sounded so beautiful and its modal tunes made me think of what an ancient lyre might sound like.” For Michael Levy, this kick-started his obsession with the lyre, although it was almost 25 years before he actually acquired an instrument on eBay. “The timbre of the instrument was like a musical magic carpet ride back in time. But it took me a long while to create music myself, to emulate this feeling the music gave to me and give it to others.” He’s now made over 30 recordings, created music for exhibition soundscapes and had his ‘Hymn to Zeus’ incorporated…

Apparently vinyls are killing the planet, while streaming is also bad news for the environment… What’s a music lover to do? Russ Slater offers up his essential guide for eco-friendly home-listening A peculiar trait of mainstream media, it seems, is that they like to bait us whenever possible, making things that we’ve long taken for granted instantly repugnant. Drinking red wine at room temperature? You’ve got to be joking. Still storing your tomatoes in the fridge? Th ink again. And you know those vinyl records you’ve been buying? Well, they’re killing the planet. Hold on! But I just read that music streaming is the worst thing for the climate since the Industrial Age. Well, it turns out that both are true (although I may be over-exaggerating the Industrial Age bit),…

01 Barrio Lindo Fulgor (Shika Shika, 2019) Argentinian murga, Brazilian chocalho, Ecuadorean San Juanito and rootless reggaeton rhythms inform this chilled-out celebration of dance culture and the natural world. Panpipes collide with old-school synths and wilderness sounds, and you can never quite tell which is a tweet, which a bleep. Barrio Lindo (aka Agustín Rivaldo) is joined on several tracks here by fellow Argentinian electro-ethnomusic producer Jin Yerei (aka Federico Sánchez) and Ecuadorian band Huaira. 02 Lucrecia Dalt No Era Sólida (RVNG Intl, 2020) Colombian-born, Berlin-based Lucrecia Dalt’s previous albums featured field recordings and geological themes; she had formally trained as a geotechnical engineer. Here, conceptual compositions in the Laurie Anderson mould take their cue from the title (which translates as ‘She/It Wasn’t Solid’), exploring the way rhythms and melodies…