Monday, November 4, 2024
The Best New Albums from Around the World (December 2024)
Featuring Justin Adams & Mauro Durante, Ekuka Morris Sirikiti, Afro Celt Sound System, MOMO. and more
01 Justin Adams & Mauro Durante
Sweet Release (Ponderosa Music Records)
Roaring guitar mixes with a heady swirl of Italian motifs, Durante’s striking vocals and infectious percussion ride high over Adams’ gruff vox, riffs and rhythms.
02 Ekuka Morris Sirikiti
TE-KWARO ALANGO-EKUKA (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
The first venture into formal recording from Ugandan Langi griot, Sirikiti. Clapping and buzzy lukeme (thumb piano) undergird warm voices in a warm, exciting record.
03 Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin
symbiont (Smithsonian Folkways)
Blount and Mali confront the apocalypse of today, incorporating old spirituals and new hymns into the realm of electronics, with complex rhythms and incantatory chants.
04 Afro Celt Sound System
OVA (Six Degrees Music)
A gentle, intricate and exhilarating fusion of voices and instruments meet on the last Afro Celt album that Simon Emmerson was able to work on before his passing.
05 MOMO.
Gira (Batov Records)
Percussion, mischievous horns, and echoing vocals combine devilishly in MOMO.’s slinky, uplifting “London album”, one with all the makings of a swinging classic.
06 Qais Essar
Echoes of the Unseen (Worlds Within Worlds / Art as Catharsis)
Essar’s pirouetting rabab plucks are buoyed by rippling table, contemplative bansuri and more in melodies that provide an expansive meditation upon a day’s passing.
07 Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Woodland (Acony Records)
With Welch’s distinctive drawl and Rawlings’ masterful acoustic guitar and breathy harmonies, this new album of originals contains wry reflections on ageing, social media, politics and much in between.
08 Nfaly Diakité
Hunter Folk Vol I: Tribute to Toumani Koné (Mieruba)
The taut, bustling strings of Diakité’s donso ngoni and the scouring metallic scuff of a keregne charge this album dedicated to the memory of storyteller, poet and musician Toumani Koné.
09 Dal:um
Coexistence (tak:til / Glitterbeat Records)
With gayageum and geomungo zithers, the Korean duo craft soul-stirring, cinematic sounds, weaving cascades of plucked and bowed strings mesmerically through and around one another.
10 Joel Lyssarides & Georgios Prokopiou
Arcs & Rivers (ACT)
Bouzouki and piano gambol delightfully and masterfully in unison through striking Greek idioms in this new fusion endeavour.
