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Live review from WOMAD Charlton Park Festival 2011
Aurelio (he seems to have lost his surname, like Madonna) gave up his career as the representative of the Garifunas in the Honduras National Congress to resume his career as a musical spokesman for his people, taking over from from his friend Andy Palacio, who died tragically young a couple of years ago...
...his band were probably the most accomplished of the entire Festival. As Caetano Veloso said to me about Brazilian music - the sweetness perhaps comes from the strong native Indian influence (something you don't get in, for example, Argentina).
Press review from: The Arts Desk (UK)
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...exploring themes of hope, tolerance and liberty.
A heady collision of musical genres and visuals...the musicians who strolled onstage alongside Page and O'Neil were Algerian violinist Mounir Baziz, Palestinian percussionist Iba Abu Khalaf and the Jordan-raised Palestinian singer/oud player, Nizar Issa. From the off they flawlessly meshed their live solos and Nizar's vocals with pared back, recorded rhythm tracks which allowed the audience to bathe in the sounds of the sweeping rhythmic brush strokes of the seven piece Pan Arab Strings Of Damascus.
Stepping out of the venue into the unrelenting rain, after being immersed in music that shimmered with the heat of the desert, should have been a complete downer but Syriana's widescreen, cinematic sound, where the John Barry Seven meets Marc Ribot meets Hank Marvin via Abdel Halim, Sabah and Asmahan carried this listener all the way home.
Press review from: Mondomix.com (UK)
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...highly evocative and atmospheric...
...Syriana did not disappoint. With the help of backing tracks featuring the Pan Arab strings of Damascus, the album's highly evocative and atmospheric pieces were transcribed very effectively to the stage with the addition of three talented musicians of various ethnic origins, all hailing from Arab countries.
Shades of Film Noir and spy stories, fighter planes, black and white photos of the Middle East in the 50s, desert landscapes and Cold War memories were all used to great effect in the thought-provoking and striking visual backdrop of the specially commissioned film and animation...The two songs "Gharibb" and "Al Araby" were velvety yet intoxicating...Three new numbers were played which clearly demonstrated that Syriana are here to stay and deliver their special brew of East meets West music. Let's hope so and wish them well!
Press review from: JPR Podcasts (Review of live performance at Islington Assembly Hall) ()
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CD Review: Tell No Lies
There must be multitudes of world music fans who are pleased that Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara only waited about a year to follow up their first collaboration. Their new Tell No Lies retains the refreshing jolt of the previous collaboration, offering up Bo Diddley-infused jams, meditations with a lighter swing) and even a blistering excursion into Latin rhythms that the first album left unexplored...
Press review from: RootsWorld (USA)
CD Review: Tell No Lies
On their sophomore outing, the two once again effortlessly fuse blues-based rock with traditional African music. This is nicely highlighted on Tonio yima, with its smooth guitar riffs intermingling with intricate African rhythms. This is definitely a keeper.
Press review from: Hour.ca (Canada)
An Atmospheric Evocation
The soundtrack to Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's televisual trek across Africa proves both an atmospheric evocation of that vast continent and a commentary on the pair's, ahem, 'inner journey'... Real World's trademark sound - clean, sometimes austere - matches the emptiness of the African road, while its experimentalism keeps the outlook unpredictable.
Press review from: The Observer (UK)
A Delight
...these highlights from the Real World catalogue plus a title track from Stereophonics turn out to be a delight.
Press review from: Financial Times (UK)
Excellent back catalogue outing
...kicks off with the pleasantly rousing theme song specially written by Stereophonics, and then zigzags across the bikers' route....It's not a best of selection from the countries they drove across, but it does provide an opportunity for Real World to give another outing to their excellent back catalogue. The great Somali singer Maryam Mursal is matched alongside Uganda's Geoffrey Oryema or Kenya's hypnotic Ayub Ogada; other tracks come from the sturdy Italian band Spaccanapoli or that great exponent of Scottish folk-electronica, the late Martyn Bennett.
Press review from: The Guardian (UK)
The birth of something new and exciting
Live Review: WOMAD, Charlton Park 2007
Britain and Asia met again in the Imagined Village, an attempt to reinterpret English folk song in the light of what Britain now is, with veteran folkie Martin Carthy joined by Billy Bragg and various British Asian musicians... There was a sense of being in on the birth of something new and exciting.
Press review from: The Telegraph (UK)
Righteous Fire
Live review: WOMAD, Charlton Park 2007
A swirling, English ceilidh, stitched together by electric guitar and Indian drums and angry lyrics about current rural life, has righteous fire.
Press review from: The Independent (UK)
Expansive Sonic Perspective
Adrian Sherwood made his name as a wildly original and experimental producer and owner of Britain's On-U Sound label, home to some of the wildest reggae and dub recordings of the 1980s and 1990s. His recent emergence as a solo artist finds him exploring all manner of rock, reggae and worldbeat sounds, all with his trademark disregard for musical boundaries and expansive sonic perspective. And he's still cashing in IOUs from A-list musical friends, which means that his solo albums are chock full of excellent guest appearances. Don't miss this one.
Press review from: CD Hotlist (USA)
Expansive Sonic Perspective
Adrian Sherwood made his name as a wildly original and experimental producer and owner of Britain's On-U Sound label, home to some of the wildest reggae and dub recordings of the 1980s and 1990s. His recent emergence as a solo artist finds him exploring all manner of rock, reggae and worldbeat sounds, all with his trademark disregard for musical boundaries and expansive sonic perspective. And he's still cashing in IOUs from A-list musical friends, which means that his solo albums are chock full of excellent guest appearances. Don't miss this one.
Press review from: CD Hotlist (USA)
Future-Bound
Becoming a Cliché might be Adrian Sherwood's self-deprecating reference to his by now trademarked post-reggae dub style. The On-U Sound headmaster's second "solo" album again exhibits Sherwood's signature melting pot of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and heavy Jamaican sounds. But it's the sound of 2010. When one is as future-bound as this, remaining rooted in a singular vision ain't a bad thing! That Sherwood's new album is brilliant is no surprise, that his sonic stamp is more noticeable than that of his high caliber guests (Lee "Scratch" Perry, Dennis Bovell, etc.) might be, but that's okay too.
Press review from: XLR8R (USA)
Future-Bound
Becoming a Cliché might be Adrian Sherwood's self-deprecating reference to his by now trademarked post-reggae dub style. The On-U Sound headmaster's second "solo" album again exhibits Sherwood's signature melting pot of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and heavy Jamaican sounds. But it's the sound of 2010. When one is as future-bound as this, remaining rooted in a singular vision ain't a bad thing! That Sherwood's new album is brilliant is no surprise, that his sonic stamp is more noticeable than that of his high caliber guests (Lee "Scratch" Perry, Dennis Bovell, etc.) might be, but that's okay too.
Press review from: XLR8R (USA)
Diverse, sprightly dub from veteran producer
The godfather of the British dub scene, Adrian Sherwood, has been the inspired mind behind so many innovations in alternative music that he is now something of an institution... Here he is again, demonstrating that the producer as an artist can create an album of real weight and interest. This is an incredibly diverse musical tapestry - from plaintive, melancholic trumpet solos to dark, Krakow backstreet violin reels, all set against beautifully deep beats.
Sherwood's use of beats is highly inventive and this album is light and very listenable. It's not the kind of dub that gets mired in the quicksand; it's catchy and cool with a spring its step.
Press review from: Songlines (UK)
Diverse, sprightly dub from veteran producer
The godfather of the British dub scene, Adrian Sherwood, has been the inspired mind behind so many innovations in alternative music that he is now something of an institution... Here he is again, demonstrating that the producer as an artist can create an album of real weight and interest. This is an incredibly diverse musical tapestry - from plaintive, melancholic trumpet solos to dark, Krakow backstreet violin reels, all set against beautifully deep beats.
Sherwood's use of beats is highly inventive and this album is light and very listenable. It's not the kind of dub that gets mired in the quicksand; it's catchy and cool with a spring its step.
Press review from: Songlines (UK)
Still pushing the boat out
Adrian Sherwood's immense influence on how seemingly disparate genres can be mix'n'matched remains undimmed. Still pushing the boat out, Monastery of Sound pits Gregorian chants against Sherwood's mortar-loosening dub, as if monks and Rastas were soul brothers.... But nothing matches Piece Of The Earth, where Little Roy sings over Jazzwad's turbo-charged backbeat, while Sherwood earns genuine majesty.
Press review from: Q (UK)
Still pushing the boat out
Adrian Sherwood's immense influence on how seemingly disparate genres can be mix'n'matched remains undimmed. Still pushing the boat out, Monastery of Sound pits Gregorian chants against Sherwood's mortar-loosening dub, as if monks and Rastas were soul brothers.... But nothing matches Piece Of The Earth, where Little Roy sings over Jazzwad's turbo-charged backbeat, while Sherwood earns genuine majesty.
Press review from: Q (UK)
Dub's been good to me
Sherwood has spent most of his career below the rock and pop radar, failing to earn much money. And for most of the time, you suspect, that's the way he has liked it.
"I've always felt like an outsider, never invited to the party" he says. "But I've had a long association with really good people that I'm proud of. Respect is worth more than money..."
Around him gather an extended crew of reggae heroes, punk survivors and rap progenitors who, in a bewildering variety of incarnations produced by Sherwood, go on to make big, bass-driven soundscapes that embrace dub and reggae, the blues, funk, heavy rock, teasing vocal samples and ambient and world music, sometimes all in one track.
Not surprisingly, the Sherwood family tree is complicated. He finally put his own name to an album Never Trust a Hippy three years ago, after a lifetime orchestrating the efforts of others, but that, too, was a collaborative affair, roping in friends to make what he called a "kind of sci-fi , world-y dance record" for Peter Gabriel's Real World label....
Now he has produced another solo album, Becoming a Cliché, this time more reggae-tinged, though still rich in world music references, and with songs. Among others, Sherwood's daughters, 21 and 10, both sing, and the eldest's boyfriend, a Portuguese classical violinist, plays haunting snatches of gypsy fiddle, so the production is, as ever, a family affair.
The family connection is alive in another Sherwood production, the fifth album from Tackhead guitarist Skip McDonald's dub-blues band Little Axe. It's a fine record that continues McDonald's experiment with the blues a version that predates and outstrips Moby's efforts in the genre. Moby, of course, is a multimillion selling artist. Skip, meanwhile, is living in this flat, in a small room between the On-U archive and the kitchen.
It's clearly love not money that keeps Sherwood and his collective going. "My aim was always to survive doing what I like," Sherwood says. 'For some people, going to the studio is like going to the office, but for me, it's never been like work.'
Read the full article... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/11/11/bmdub11.xml
Press review from: The Telegraph (Richard Preston)
Becoming a Cliché
Producer Adrian Sherwood was among the first to bring the sonic experimentalism of Jamaican dub to this country in the early '80s, recording a range of groundbreaking music for his On U Sound label... Fusing new Jamaican sounds and studio techniques with emerging forms such as hip-hop and post-punk, he left an indelible mark on British music.
Becoming a Cliché is an entirely new album from Sherwood, whose haunting studio science and eclectic choice of collaborators still sound fresh a quarter of a century on.
Press review from: The Telegraph (UK)
A Cook's Approach To Music
As well as being one of the world's most influential producers, the Tackhead/On-U Sound mainman and former Clash DJ is a highly rated chef. Sherwood's second album adopts a cook's approach to music: taking a basic stew of reggae and hurling in flavours from drum'n'bass and Asian tablas to Gregorian chants. With vocal/dinner guests including Dennis Bovell and the Pop Group's Mark Stewart, political assaults, and underlines his gigantic contribution to the way music sounds today. With everyone catching up, it's becoming harder for him to break new ground. Still, getting his daughters denise and Emily to duet with roots legend Lee Perry on the Jackanory-like Animal Magic ("Rastafari, says the cat") invents a whole new genre: infant dub.
Press review from: The Guardian (UK)
Dub's been good to me
Sherwood has spent most of his career below the rock and pop radar, failing to earn much money. And for most of the time, you suspect, that's the way he has liked it.
"I've always felt like an outsider, never invited to the party" he says. "But I've had a long association with really good people that I'm proud of. Respect is worth more than money..."
Around him gather an extended crew of reggae heroes, punk survivors and rap progenitors who, in a bewildering variety of incarnations produced by Sherwood, go on to make big, bass-driven soundscapes that embrace dub and reggae, the blues, funk, heavy rock, teasing vocal samples and ambient and world music, sometimes all in one track.
Not surprisingly, the Sherwood family tree is complicated. He finally put his own name to an album Never Trust a Hippy three years ago, after a lifetime orchestrating the efforts of others, but that, too, was a collaborative affair, roping in friends to make what he called a "kind of sci-fi , world-y dance record" for Peter Gabriel's Real World label....
Now he has produced another solo album, Becoming a Cliché, this time more reggae-tinged, though still rich in world music references, and with songs. Among others, Sherwood's daughters, 21 and 10, both sing, and the eldest's boyfriend, a Portuguese classical violinist, plays haunting snatches of gypsy fiddle, so the production is, as ever, a family affair.
The family connection is alive in another Sherwood production, the fifth album from Tackhead guitarist Skip McDonald's dub-blues band Little Axe. It's a fine record that continues McDonald's experiment with the blues a version that predates and outstrips Moby's efforts in the genre. Moby, of course, is a multimillion selling artist. Skip, meanwhile, is living in this flat, in a small room between the On-U archive and the kitchen.
It's clearly love not money that keeps Sherwood and his collective going. "My aim was always to survive doing what I like," Sherwood says. 'For some people, going to the studio is like going to the office, but for me, it's never been like work.'
Read the full article... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/11/11/bmdub11.xml
Press review from: The Telegraph (Richard Preston)
Becoming a Cliché
Producer Adrian Sherwood was among the first to bring the sonic experimentalism of Jamaican dub to this country in the early '80s, recording a range of groundbreaking music for his On U Sound label... Fusing new Jamaican sounds and studio techniques with emerging forms such as hip-hop and post-punk, he left an indelible mark on British music.
Becoming a Cliché is an entirely new album from Sherwood, whose haunting studio science and eclectic choice of collaborators still sound fresh a quarter of a century on.
Press review from: The Telegraph (UK)
A Cook's Approach To Music
As well as being one of the world's most influential producers, the Tackhead/On-U Sound mainman and former Clash DJ is a highly rated chef. Sherwood's second album adopts a cook's approach to music: taking a basic stew of reggae and hurling in flavours from drum'n'bass and Asian tablas to Gregorian chants. With vocal/dinner guests including Dennis Bovell and the Pop Group's Mark Stewart, political assaults, and underlines his gigantic contribution to the way music sounds today. With everyone catching up, it's becoming harder for him to break new ground. Still, getting his daughters denise and Emily to duet with roots legend Lee Perry on the Jackanory-like Animal Magic ("Rastafari, says the cat") invents a whole new genre: infant dub.
Press review from: The Guardian (UK)
An old dog who's mastered all the new tricks
West London dub veteran and On-U meister opens his address book and concocts a solo album chock full of frontline guests. Lee Perry, LSK, Mark Stewart and Dennis Bovell all bob by for an album that explores the man's long term love affair with reggae's family tree.... Imagine if you will the punky reggae party of legend reinvented through the mind of a globetrotting dub idealist.
Press review from: Swell Music ()
An old dog who's mastered all the new tricks
West London dub veteran and On-U meister opens his address book and concocts a solo album chock full of frontline guests. Lee Perry, LSK, Mark Stewart and Dennis Bovell all bob by for an album that explores the man's long term love affair with reggae's family tree.... Imagine if you will the punky reggae party of legend reinvented through the mind of a globetrotting dub idealist.
Press review from: Swell Music ()
Super Sizer
From the first eerie strains of opening track, Fling Fatale, there's something familiar about all this. But only insofar as the odd riff, lyric or sample brings to mind U2, Blur, Space, the Beatles or Lemon Jelly. The celebratory title track, for example, sounds nothing like any existing Lemon Jelly track, but there it is anyway, a postcard from the same dazzling sunny scenes first painted by the Jelly. Beautiful single, Day By Day, meanwhile, is the thought that John Lennon never had. Nothing seems to be beyond their reach and the results are less like songs and more like beautiful collages. Forgive the far-fetched metaphor but HJP is an album full of Sizer Barker's personal holiday snaps form their travels via their favourite musical landmarks, taken with loving respect and personalised by novelty hats and unpredicatable weather; the focus soft one moment and sharp the next.
Press review from: The Big Issue (UK)
IN 2000 Sizer Barker released Day by Day, a dreamy siren of a pop single that had the music press crashing on the rocks.
In 2004 they release their debut album. The chants of Why Are We Waiting? have long since died away.
Brown and his current cohorts Tim Bruzon and Maria Hughes have thrown the kitchen sink into their debut, employing a dozen-plus instruments and aided by a dozen support players, including no fewer than four drummers.
And thats not to mention the innumerable deftly-executed programming tricks. Every song boasts some form of embellishment be it cut-up beats or synthetic wailing.
The bands ethos appears to be that no song should be left unadulterated if it can be helped. They take a pleasant tune and see how they can corrupt it and thereby render it more interesting. The arrangements are complex and diverse but never over-fussy.
Psychedelia
The overall musical style is tricky, and maybe impossible, to categorise, although several songs are tinged with a mellow psychedelia. The mood is very erratic, oscillating between sombre and carefree.
Browns vocals arent at all fixed either, plaintive one moment, menacing the next. His voice itself is a cross between Elvis Costello and Damon Albarn, several songs featuring Blur-style la-la-laing.
Day by Day and its flip-side Lowly may be four years old but theyre far too classy to have been discarded. The good news is that they are eclipsed by several of the newer inclusions.
Opener Fling Fatale, with its warped vocal samples and odd effects, sounds at certain points like The Beatles Revolution 9, its tone vaguely threatening. The crackers title track screams Lemon Jelly while Blue Ocean, Yellow Sun is an alluring cross between Donovan and Super Furry Animals.
What this all adds up to is a boldly ambitious and thrillingly different record. And there are no duffers. Sizer Barker have delivered handsomely on their early promise. The Hotel Juicy Parlour is well worth a visit.
Press review from: manchester on-line (UK)
album review
Sizer Barker's frontman and songwriter, Carl Brown, seems to have suffered a string of frustrating blind alleys. Starting out as a studio engineer, he joined Space as replacement guitarist just as their progress ground to an ignominious halt. Embarking on a solo career as Sizer Barker in 2000, Brown's first single "Day by Day", a wistful, yearning song built on an intriguing blend of zither and accordion, was well-received but soon disappeared. As follow-up, he choose "Something in the Park (Is Always Happening)", a curiously childlike but sinister number about feeling out of place and afraid in New York. It was slated for release on 14 September 2001, but for obvious reasons never appeared. Brown soldiered on with a slimmed-down line-up of fellow multi-instrumentalist Tim Bruzon and bassist Maria Hughes, finally completing this stylish debut album. It's a sparkling, diverse collection, full of Beatlesque melodies and quirky, exotic arrangements featuring weird, warped Eastern horns, plangent guitars, burring organs and the aforementioned zither. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brown's songs depict a world of fleeting opportunities and unfulfilled desires, where chances must be grasped quickly before they evaporate. Well worth a listen - it's the least he deserves.
Press review from: The Independent (UK)
album review
The release of Sizer Barker's debut album has been a long time coming. The single 'Day by Day' (included here) received high praise when sent out as a demo in 2001 - then got pulled because of its lyrical content after the 9/11 attacks. Carl Brown and chums have put the intervening years to good use, coming up with a fine collection of sunny, Sixties-tinged pop songs with pretty melodies and close-harmony choruses ('Climb Aboard' is very CSNY). And where the tunes run out of puff, fed-back psychedelic guitars suddenly turn up, or the band surprise with a tootling recorder solo ('Something in the Park'). Prettily good.
Press review from: The Observer (UK)
Album Review
"It has been a long time in the making, but the debut album from this Liverpool trio is worth the wait. Grin-inducing good-time melodies meet beautifully fragile acoustically led tracks, all the while driven by curious electronic beats which give the record a modern feel."
Press review from: Music Week (UK)
Album Review
The story: Liverpudlians who released the single Day By Day over three years ago finally get their kooky melodies on an album.
The vibe: Scouse quirkiness with added zithers.
Press review from: Rip & Burn (UK)
'It is when we see a nation's people joining joyfully together in song and tune or lamenting alone in sorrow that we come closest to viewing the character of a nation.'
Press review from: Dirty Linen (USA)
Eindeutig und ehrlich sind die Geschichten, die sie uns mit einer Stimme erzählt, die alle Facetten von Emotionen mit der Kraft des Erlebten widergibt.
Press review from: Regensburger Stadtzeitung (Germany)
A WEEKLY UPDATE OF NEW MUSIC, TUNES & WHAT'S
'Although the two albums don't bare that many similarities, it's hard to keep Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' far from your thoughts when listening to 'Quick Look' (Realworld) by Pina. Along with Joseph Arthur and Afro Celt Sound System, Pina makes what some call an unconventional music sound so familiar. 'Quick Look' showcases a huge talent, which should be investigated immediately.'
June 28, 2002 Issue: 36
Press review from: Soundwaves (Magazine Country)
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