Steve Knightley
Positively Folk Street: Dylan, Carthy and Me
Hands On Music
★★★★★

FOLLOWING his recent solo album The Winter Yards and motivated after seeing the recent film A Complete Unknown, Steve Knightley has now taken the opportunity to pay tribute to two of his musical inspirations, Bob Dylan and Martin Carthy.

It’s a fitting combination given that Carthy himself influenced Dylan when he was trying to navigate the British folk scene in the 1960s and this 12-track album alternates between Dylan songs and the traditional English folk songs promoted by Carthy.

Starting with Dylan’s Girl from the North Country we then get the first Carthy-arranged song, Broomfield Hill. Other traditional songs include Lord Franklin and the murder ballad Bruton Town, whilst the Dylan songs include Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right and Boots of Spanish Leather.

Ending with Seven Yellow Gypsies this is also a tribute to Knightley’s own prowess as a performer as well as that of his heroes.
Steve Johnson

Jupiter & Okwess
Ekoya
(Airphono)
★★★★★

JUPITER BOKONDJI and Okwess International wowed UK audiences in 2012 who saw Damon Albarn’s Africa Express train tour headlined by Baba Maal, Amadou and Mariam and kora player Toumani Diabaté.

A veteran of the Kinshasa street music scene in the Democratic Republic Of Congo, when civil war broke out in 1990 band members headed to Europe, but Jupiter stayed and rebuilt the band.  

Recorded in Guadalajara and Mexico City, Ekoya (It  Will Come), their fourth album, is about resilience and the struggles of everyday life in the DRC.

Vibrant Congolese funk and soukous laced with Latin American influences, Jupiter reflects: “Our music has been given a new dimension. We discovered things that pushed us to think differently. There are people there who have Congolese roots. They are part of the story of Africa, are part of us and part of our music.” Unmissable.
Tony Burke

Jason Palmer
The Cross Over: Live in Brooklyn
(GiantStep Arts Records)
★★★★★

THE anthemic volley of unaccompanied notes that introduce a track that could be especially for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, B.A.M.D. (Budgets are Moral Documents) on trumpeter Jason Palmer’s double album The Cross Over: Live in Brooklyn, makes a gripping preface to this inspiring quartet album.

With superfine saxophonist Mark Turner, drummer Marcus Gilmore and gyrating bassist Larry Grenadier, Palmer plays his own expressive compositions, including a moving homage to civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and a tribute to all those who struggled for people’s freedom — and those who need to do it all again to remove the curse of Trumpery.

Gilmore’s rumbustious drumming opens Palmer’s salute to the late tenorist Wayne Shorter with its grim warning of a title: Beware of Captain America, before Palmer’s  brass burns in with long, passionate salvos.

An album of our times here, with past and future blown with horns of change and promise.
Chris Searle

Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver
Hinterland
(Ear to the Ground)
★★★★

LISA KNAPP and Gerry Driver are both established folk musicians in their own right and in this their first collaborative album they draw heavily on English and Irish traditions but with a new and contemporary feel.

The album covers themes of nature and history starting with Hawk and Crow, taking us into the world of birds in a forest, whilst Train Song takes us on a journey across England’s landscapes.

There are instrumental tracks like Monaghan Jig/Monks Set and Penumbra, whilst Star Carr is a song inspired by an archaeological find of Mesolithic antler headdresses in Yorkshire some decades ago.

I Must Away Love comes from the singing of Dubliner Luke Kelly and this is followed by a haunting version of the murder ballad Long Lankin. Ending with another traditional song Lass of Aughrim, the album does what it sets out to do in reinvigorating the folk genre.
SJ

Kin’Gongolo Kiniata
Kiniata
Hélico
★★★★★

A MUSIC revival is taking place in the DRC and Kin’Gongolo Kiniata debuts with an album demanding peace, justice and dignity for the Congolese people in the face of homelessness, corruption and armed groups connected with the copper and cobalt trade, using child labour.

Kin’Gongolo Kiniata means the sound created by containers carried by oil sellers who hawk oil during power cuts. It also describes the group’s mesmeric rapid fire soukous created on home-made percussion and one and two string guitars and bass.  

The band rehearsed for three years, four times a week before they played a “boiler room” event in Kinshasa — after which they were contacted by the Hélico label to cut this album.  

Tracks like Toko Lemba Te refers to the greed for valuable natural resources while Elengi Ya Ko Vivre implores people to abandon gang life. Real-life infectious street music.
TB

Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey
Brink
Intakt Records
★★★★

LIKE many musician-partners, German tenor and soprano saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and Californian drummer Tom Rainey’s duo relationship intensified during Covid in their Brooklyn apartment, becoming a catalyst for much they have played since, including this intimately creative and beautiful duo album recorded in June 2024, Brink.

This is finely crafted music, with Laubrock’s ever-searching horn and Rainey’s gently explorative percussive undertow unifying to form one small world of sounds, making one duo an everywhere. Listen to Flock of Conclusions or Arrival of Never https://laubrock-intakt.bandcamp.com/album/brink to know how two instruments become one.

Always quiescent, never overplayed, their common timbre is gentle, yet the passion in their creative fire never slackens. In Coaxing, Laubrock blows hard and uncompromising, and in Liquified Columns, seeping through Rainey’s gongs and cymbals, she radiates a mysterious aura which hangs like a sonic cloud over Brooklyn.

This is music over the brink, into a valley of special artistry.
CS

Dan Sealey
Beware of Darkness
Self-Released
★★★★

IF there was anything good about lockdown it was that it provided an opportunity for musicians to reflect and explore the challenges it posed and to express this in musical form. This album by Dan Sealey was mostly written in that period, with the album title coming from a George Harrison song.

Experience of meditation is the theme of Looking Inward, whilst Yesterday Came talks about letting go and Better Day refers to new beginnings. As well as personal reflections however, there are songs dealing with wider issues. Keep On Reading is about the dangers posed by the corporate media control of news and a plea to look beyond this.

All Stand Up is a plea for unity against inequality, whilst Inside My Head is a tongue-in-cheek song about self-doubt whilst hoping for something better. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes uplifting, this is an album we can all relate to.
SJ

Simin Tande
The Wind
Jazzland Recordings
★★★★

AFGHAN/GERMAN vocalist Simin Tander was born and raised in Cologne, the daughter of an Afghan journalist and a German teacher. She undertook classical vocal training but realised that she preferred vocal improvisation.

This set contains classical, folk and jazz traditions as well as old songs and poetry from Afghanistan and Europe plus her own compositions, notably the hypnotic The Wind Within Her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT6NypMmy2Y and Woken Dream.

Simin also draws on her deep Middle Eastern heritage by singing in Afghaani and in Pashto on the opener Meena. Nursling Of The Sky is based on a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley and My Weary Heart is taken from a Norwegian folk song.

Accompanied by violin, bass guitar, percussion and electronics, the set blurs the lines between jazz and global music. A powerful mix of experimental jazz-folk with ethereal sounds. Intriguing listening for those with broad horizons.
TB

PAZ
Variation and Creation: The Story of PAZ
(Jazz in Britain Records)
★★★★

HERE is a jewel of the 1970s, a three-CD package of outstanding musicianship, brought together from recordings and unreleased sessions by the Latin/Jazz/Fusion band, PAZ.

Looking through the personnel list, it sparkles with powerful talent: guitarists Allan Holdsworth, Phil Lee and Jim Mullen: saxophonist Ray Warleigh and Lol Coxhill: bassist Ron Mathewson; percussionists Joao Bosco de Oliveira and Ankalo Perez — just to begin with.

With compositions by Jobim, Coltrane, Zawinul and PAZ keyboardists Dick Crouch and Geoff Castle providing the majority, the band brought a far dream of an ideal Brazil to the pre-Thatcherite streets of Britain, while in the real Brazil military dictatorship reigned.

The Latin sound was a powerful force in those times, and how these British virtuosi sought to emulate it! Here are the results: music evocative of a far continent, full of fire and empathy stretching with melody and rhythm across an ocean.