Tim Garland
If the Sea Replied
(Sirocco)
£13.99
As both composer and player, Tim Garland can always be relied upon to come up with something new and stimulating, but this time he has surpassed himself. If the Sea Replied is a 14-part suite inspired by the sea, lighthouses and the vanishing world of the lighthouse keeper. Into its texture are woven his saxophone and bass clarinet, the strings of the Northern Sinfonia, the guitar of his collaborator, Don Paterson,...#65279; and the voice of Dave Appleby, Britain’s last lighthouseman. All these forces are deployed with extraordinary originality. Garland recorded some bass clarinet passages inside St Mary’s Lighthouse, near Whitley Bay, exploiting its natural resonance in such a way that he seems to be playing the building itself. At other points, such as the opening ‘Tide Races’, Garland’s sheer virtuosity is breathtaking. DG
Kokanko Sata
Kokanko Sata
(Honest Jon’s)
£13.99
The first sound we hear from Kokanko Sata on her mesmerising, dry-as-a-bone debut is an intake of breath. This is a woman who’s been biding her time; a thirtysomething mother-of-three from Wassoulou in southern Mali who has broken all sorts of taboos by becoming a virtuoso on the kamalengoni, a boys’ own, eight-string hunters’ harp. Sata taught herself how to play – no man would teach her – and here, al fresco, backed by birds and companionable balafon, flute, guitar and percussion, she sings her heartfelt songs of experience (‘I have been short-changed/ Patience’; ‘This world is music hard to dance to’; ‘The mosque of a hypocritical imam is always half-empty’) over the tumbling, buzzy notes of an instrument she made herself. In the sleevenotes, Sata says she dislikes tape piracy and betrayal, ‘especially that of some producers’, but Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label has surely done her proud. CMcD
Best of the rest
Herbie Hancock
Inventions and Dimensions
(Blue Note)
Hancock’s third album re-released, with a bonus alternative version of ‘Mimosa’.
Salif Keita & Kante Manfila
The Lost Album
(Syllart)
Dreamy acoustic double act from 1980, previously unreleased.
