Maypoles themselves go back in this country at least to, er, 1400

 

As I come to the end of my time with 2017 album charts, I've been having a dig around various sites to see what decent albums the charts were in no danger of presenting to me - and I noticed that The Guardian did a year-end top 50 albums, which I've written up for the past five years now. So it would seem rude not to start another list - even though, in order to complete it before I get to the end of '17, I'm going to have to do three albums a day, which may prove to be a challenge..

#50 : Ladilikan - Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet

The Malian group and the San Francisco-based quartet came together for this adventurous collaboration, which blends experimental western strings with African traditional sounds. Trio Da Kali specialise in west African griot-style music, but on Ladilikan they spread their wings, inspired by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson on a reworked God Shall Wipe All Tears Away.

I never like African style music (and yes, I realise this is a massive over-simplification of a huge genre) as much as I think I should, but I was certainly interested to see what this "adventurous collaboration" would bring.

Well, I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as to describe it as adventurous, but I quite liked this. It feels like both sides toned down the more extreme aspects of the other side's work and they met somewhere nicely in the middle, with some obviously African style rhythms being nicely balanced by some Western style strings with Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté providing some lovely vocals over the top of them. There's also a whole load of obviously skilful playing on display throughout - all in all, it's quite an impressive album which works well.

There's no Wikipedia entry for the album but it does get a passing mention in Trio Da Kali's entry - there's nothing on the Kronos Quartet entry, but I learned they've been going for over fifty years, so there's quite a lot of competition there. Somewhat surprisingly, we do have some minor chart action to report - it spent one week on both the Independent and Record Store album charts.

discogs.com tells us you'll have to spend £20 to get a decent version, with no options to spend any more that - it doesn't feel like the sort of album to have a limited edition neon pink vinyl option somehow. It's a very decent listen though which I found to be surprisingly enjoyable.

#49 : Till April Is Dead: A Garland of May - Lisa Knapp

Knapp’s paean to May Day takes in layers of babbling spoken word, frantic rhythms and birdsong samples, all while warmly evoking bygone times. On Searching for Lambs, Blur’s Graham Coxon joins in, while folk star Mary Hampton provides accompaniment on the enchanting Bedfordshire May Day Carol. It’s a kaleidoscopic trip through Britain’s past.

"Babbling spoken word", eh? Hmmm...

Well, the good news is that it's not as bad as I feared - it's certainly an interesting listen. The songs are generally based upon simple melodies with old-fashioned folky lyrics sung beautifully by Lisa, but then they sometimes have "extras" added in - which, quite frankly, could be anything. I think I prefer the tracks where she doesn't try to add too much - "Pleasant Month Of May" was probably my favourite. The overall feeling is that Björk has had a go at an English folk album - I can't say I'll be rushing back to it, but it was definitely adventurous and different. I'd certainly check her out if she was playing a festival stage near me because I reckon she's sound lovely in the sunshine - I'll also be interested to find out how old she is, because it's very hard to guess from this. 

There's no Wikipedia entry for the album, but her entry tells us she's 52, has released four well received folk albums between '07-'25 and she's now most commonly seen as part of a duo with Gerry Diver, her husband. There's no chart action at all though, which probably isn't the biggest surprise ever.

discogs.com tells you can spend £11 on the CD version or £20 on the limited edition vinyl. I can see quite a few fans of this going for the traditional vinyl option, but despite its obvious historic roots, there's no danger of this being a traditional folk album - it's an interesting listen, but overly quirky in places for me.

#48 : Vijay Iyer Sextet - Far From Over

Pianist Iyer covers a huge amount of ground here, taking in blues, folk, post-bop, electronica and south Indian rhythms. Despite its heady combination of influences the pace is relentless, as tradition merges with innovation.

Well, that's an intriguing description which gives me absolutely no clue what to expect.

Well, to my uncultured ear this covers all the ground from jazz to, well, jazz. It's one of those genres that I can really only tell you if I hate it or not - and the good news for Vijay is that I don't hate it. It certainly sounds skilful enough, but that's all I've really got for you, I'm afraid.

For a change, we do have a Wikipedia entry - it lists all the members of the sextet and tells us the album was "generally well-regarded" by the critics. The man himself has quite a lengthy entry - he's put out 29 album as either leader or co-leader and it lists over 50 other albums that he's been involved with as either composer or performer! Only one of those albums has ever entered any chart over here and the good news is that it's this one, which spent two weeks on the Jazz & Blues album chart, peaking at #3 - Wikipedia also tells us that it got to the dizzy heights of #160 in the main Belgium chart!

discogs.com tells us you can spend a tenner on the CD or £30 on the three-side double vinyl - I wouldn't buy a three-sided double album on principal, so it's the CD for me. Or would be if I was able to offer up any enthusiasm for any jazz - but I'm sure this is a perfectly good example if you like that sort of thing.

Three listenable albums in this round then, which is a good return for the lower reaches of The Guardian's chart. Vijay is obviously not going to take the round, but it's considerably closer between the other two than I expected - Lisa is much more up my street, but it's a bit too weird in places to be truly satisfying so I think I'm going to surprise myself and give it to Trio Da Kali and Kronos Quartet, with their fusion offering working a lot better than I ever imagined.