Maarts' reviews

Iarla O'Lionaird- Invisible Fields
Afro Celt Sound System- Anatomic


For God's sakes, you can't sing songs about cuckoos anymore!

Afro Celt Sound System for the last few years have moulded a vast array of styles and cultures together in a highly infectious package where electronic percussion and synthesizers fuse easily with the acoustic principles of African, Asian and Celtic musicianship. Where many musicians have used world music elements as an enhancement, an ornament in their work, the Afrocelts use their various influences to work in a band-type of fashion. All the songs, including the slower ones have a good signature melody and, with a few exceptions are like jamsessions between various instrumentalists with a central role for percussion and keyboards.
Anatomic is volume 5 in a series and hasn't changed much from the original recipe, outside of change in contributors. This time the voices of Dorothee Munyaneza (powerful singer, also to be found on the soundtrack of Hotel Rwanda) and Sevara Nezarkhan (check out this Uzbek singer's album Yol Bolsin) are guest starring, together with the usual Afro-eclectic array of foreign instruments like the kora, dhol, bouzouki, fiddle, djembe and talking drums, uileann pipes and flutes.
The best moments is when all those influences get together and create that total world fusion- like the battle between the uileann pipes and the soukouss-type guitar in Mojave, the duets Iarla O'Lionaird sings with Munyaneza in Mother and with Nazarkhan in My Secret Bliss and the beautiful tinkling of the kora with the piano in the final parts of Drake. At times the electronic background becomes too much to overcome though, like in Beautiful Rain which contains an English sung vocal by Iarla before being drowned out in synthesizers or in Dhol Dogs, where the pounding of those big drums is being upstaged by thundering sequencers, creating overload. But for the largest part it is a very good album, mostly high octane like a Highland jigfest and exhilarating. Next to their debut Sound Magic their finest album.

Anatomic is in stark contrast with Iarla O'Lionaird's third solo-album which appeared shortly after. Here he has the possibilty to trace back his Irish origins and using the electronic traits of his Afrocelt-brethren to maximum effect, without resorting to jigs and reels but concentrating on the storytelling ways and using his keening style without being pegged down by the instrumental environment. Invisible Fields has ten reasonably lengthy tracks, partly taken from Irish tradition, the others written by O'Lionaird in that fashion. The result is a stunning restful album with delighful supple tenor-vocals, singing songs about long forgotten wars, cuckoos, love and finding childhood dreams in the countryside. No platitudes or new agean concepts but an inspired project from a man tracing his origins through modern techniques and bringing it with a honest lilt in his voice. Standouts are the opening track A Nest of Stars with a little vocal loop at the end that breaks your heart, the poppy The Day You Were Born which wouldn't be misplaced on an U2-album, the epic Oisin's Dream with its whispered, echoed vocals like shadows from the past in a musical pattern like A Midsummer's Night Dream gone wrong and the little lullaby Scathan Na Beatha at the end, carried by harmonium and birdsong.