Ferrari Safari

Best known to us for his series of field recordings of African traditional music and for reissuing the 22-CD Historical Recordings by Hugh Tracey series, Michael Baird is also an accomplished performer in his own right. As a drummer he has played rock, Latin and modern jazz and in 1984 created his own ‘voodoo-jazz’ style with his group Sharp Wood – early pioneers of world music. On Ferrari Safari he has teamed up with classically-trained percussionist Pino Basile, who specialises in frame drums and friction drums, for an album of percussive explorations. The album is described as ‘African abstractions and Mediterranean modernisms.

It starts with a magnificent track of polyrhythmic Afro-jazz drumming on a conventional drum kit, adorned by various hand drums and shakers. Other tracks explore a variety of percussive textures and soundscapes. Some are clearly influenced by African rhythms, while others have a distinct South-East Asian flavour. With circular patterns created on multiple gongs, bells and lamellophones, there is a suggestion of Indonesian gamelan. Anyone attracted to the ground-breaking recordings of the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart (Diga, Apocalypse Now Sessions, and Däfos) should find Ferrari Safari to their liking.