Tortadur

Fans of Sevara Nazarkhan's two Real World albums are in for a surprise here – but it is an entirely pleasant one. Gone are the atmospherically layered electronic beats and the pop production in favour of a pared-down, even austere sound on a set of songs that reaches back centuries into the classical repertoire of Uzbekistan. Backed by some of the best contemporary Uzbek instrumentalists on dutar and tanbur (lutes), doira (frame drum), nai (flute) and qanun (zither), Nazarkhan's voice sounds so intimate that you almost feel her breath coming out of the speakers. The rhythm never rises much above a heartbeat and it's easy to imagine Nazarkhan and her ensemble seated in a circle, totally absorbed by the music, oblivious that anyone might be listening. Many of the lyrics here were written by ancient Sufi poets and although Sufi references to ‘the beloved’ often deliberately blur the distinction between secular and religious love, the tone here is self-evidently and exquisitely devotional. Disappointingly, the CD booklet contains no translations so the beauty of the poetry is lost on most of us.

But arguably most striking of all is the non-Sufi composition, ‘Qarchalar’. Written by a freedom fighter against Russian colonial rule, it is sung over a strange and distant percussive noise that could be intended to evoke gunfire, or perhaps the clatter of the train that transported the writer to imprisonment in Siberia. Either way, it's an astonishingly powerful close to a truly remarkable album.