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James Allsopp
Justin Thurgur: Many Faces
by Chris May
London-based trombonist Justin Thurgur is at home in several traditions. He plays contemporary English folk music with the band Bellowhead and Afrobeat with the Afrobeat Orchestra, the ensemble led by keyboard player Dele Sosimi, a childhood protégé of Fela Kuti, who has done more than any other musician to keep the Afrobeat flame alight in Britain. Thurgur is also a member of keyboard player Kishon Khan's Lokkhi Terra, who mix Bangladeshi folk music and Cuban rumba and who ...
read moreThe Golden Age Of Steam: Tomato Brain
by Bruce Lindsay
It's been a while. The Golden Age Of Steam released debut album Raspberry Tongue (Babel Records) in 2009, the follow-up, Welcome To Bat Country (Basho Records), in 2012. Then they laid low until 2020 and the appearance of album number three, Tomato Brain. It's been worth the wait. The album's multi-layered, six-part, Loftopus" is an atmospheric and often disturbing half-hour. The title track is a reminder of the comic, but dark, inventiveness of Scots poet, songwriter, humorist and all-round genius ...
read moreWorld Sanguine Report: Skeleton Blush
by Bruce Lindsay
Don't be fooled by the appearance of sanguine" in the band name. World Sanguine Report is not a band given to gentle optimism, or relaxed acceptance of whatever situation it's in. Look instead to the meaning of the word in heraldic termsblood red. Skeleton Blush is filled with hard-edged, powerful and uncompromising songs, an album that fits neatly into 2020's singular experience: which makes bandleader and composer Andrew Plummer appear remarkably prescient, as the album was recorded in 2012.
read morePigfoot: Pigfoot Shuffle
by Ian Patterson
Once a taste for mischief is acquired it's hard to rein it in. Pigfoot was having way, way too much fun on 21st Century Acid Trad (Village Life Records, 2014) to go straight on this, its second outing. If the former happily warped New Orleans jazz, Pigfoot Shuffle applies a similar concept to a broader pool of music, with rock 'n' roll, opera, soul, classic rock and pop coming in for some lovingly irreverent, jazzified treatment. In other hands it ...
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