À Principiu

À Principiu is the fifth studio album from the forward-thinking Corsican group L'Alba. The band who combine traditional Corsican music with a wider palette of sounds from the Mediterranean and beyond have drawn a growing collective of excellent international musicians around its core, including the late Malagasy accordionist, Régis Gizavo. This continues here, with guests including Senegalese-Moroccan percussionist Mokhtar Samba and Zimbabwean guitarist Louis Mhlanga.

While Corsican singing (from more contemporary forms to traditional polyphonic paghjella) is reassuringly present throughout, the album's instrumental elements oscillate more freely from one direction to another – for example from ‘Guarisce’, which has a distinctive desert blues guitar base, to the Middle Eastern-style instrumentation of ‘Ancu Sfarente’. While it's an admirable approach, I found myself craving simplicity. The standout track on the album – the superb ‘Di Punta à L'Abbissu’ – is one of the most instrumentally sparse, with just a harmonium for company. À Principiu is enjoyable from start to finish, but its finest moments are also its most understated.