Café Musique

A kind of one-man Cape Verdean chamber group, Rufino Almeida (also known as Bau), has plucked a steady course through the island's musical renaissance over the past couple of decades, applying a baroque sheen to dusty tradition. The fact that he only plays instrumentals has perhaps precluded commercial success on a par with his former employer, Cesaria Evora. But he has a virtuoso style and an unmistakable sound: clean, sharp and immaculate, performed on stringed instruments – cavaquinho, guitar, violin – crafted by his own hands.

Café Musique is basically an update of his 2003 anthology, Cape Verdean Melancholy, with several of the same songs and similar artwork. It's a comprehensive enough overview. The treated violin of pieces like ‘Ronco Di Mar’ and ‘Blimundo’ is perhaps something of an acquired taste, but Bau certainly doesn't lack scope, whipping the latter into an almost Andean fervour and – proving he doesn't take himself too seriously sneaking in a quote from bossa nova standard, ‘Berimbau’. Elsewhere, his courtly mornas succeed in imparting both a flavour of Cape Verde's tinder-dry emptiness and the parallel vastness of an imagined Iberia. There's a panoramic quality that lends itself to stage and screen – his music has scored work by choreographer Pina Bausch and Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Bau does occasionally stray into muzak territory – ‘Ceu Azul’ is a far cry from the searing roots saxophone of countryman Luis Morais. But at his best – lost in the tender trills of ‘Situaqoes Triangulares’ – there's nobody quite like him.