C. Daly King

This album is organised in seven sets and enables us to discover many sides of a repertoire Jordi Savall explores with the steadiest and most respectful hand.

Jordi Savall, Andrew Lawrence-King, Frank McGuire - The Celtic Viol II (2010) {Alia Vox AVSA 9878}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 428 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 178 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 115 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2010 Alia Vox | AVSA 9878 | DSD mastering
Classical / Chamber Music / Celtic / World / Baroque

In this sequel to their 2009 recording, Jordi Savall and Andrew Lawrence-King are joined by Frank McGuire, bodhrán (Irish frame drum) maker and player. The repertoire is a mixture of traditional Irish and Scottish folk music with some tunes published or dating from the 18th to 20th centuries. Savall has grouped them into sets, each a suite of dances and character pieces, and each performed in a single key at modern pitch.

Building on her well-represented holiday catalog, Christmas with Judy Collins is essentially a reissue of the folk artist's 2000 release All on a Wintry Night, padded with two additional songs. All 14 tracks from Wintry Night are featured here in their original sequence with the addition of a new single, the western-tinged "Angels in the Snow" leading off the album, and a stirring, largely a cappella version of "Amazing Grace" closing it out. Fans of Collins' rich, warm voice will enjoy some of the more stripped-down arrangements, which feature her singing to a simple piano accompaniment on lesser-known carols like "In the Bleak Midwinter" and "Cherry Tree Carol." On the other hand, the dated synthesizer sounds on tracks like "Come Rejoice" and "Good King Wenceslas" sound rather homogenous and the spoken intro over the faux-strings of "Away in a Manger" is far too heavy-handed to take seriously. Fortunately, the bulk of the album's 16 tracks favor the more minimalist arrangements keeping Collins' lovely voice at the forefront without much distraction.

After making a bid to become the '80s version of Steely Dan on the delightful Flaunt the Imperfection, China Crisis offered a fuller and more pop-oriented follow-up the next year. With the duo of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley (replacing Walter Becker) sharing the producer's chair, the songs on What Price Paradise feature warm, intricate arrangements and prominent brass and strings. But while more than one Langer/Winstanley offering of this era overwhelmed its subject with such treatment – Elvis Costello's ill-fated Goodbye Cruel World is a good example – the sophisticated and melodic songs here prosper from the attention to detail.

China Crisis Collection: The Very Best of China Crisis doesn't lie; true to its title, the album gathers China Crisis' brightest moments. While the exclusion of "The Highest High" is an oversight, this is one of the most accurate and thorough summaries of a band's career. Uniting elements of synth pop, jazz, progressive rock, and new wave, China Crisis sound like nobody else.

When reviewing music by a composer that is new to me I make it a policy not to read the inlay notes of the disc so as not to come to any preconceived attitudes regarding the music. So my first impressions of these "Twelve Divertimentis" by James Oswald played by Rob Mackillop on a 18th century wire-strung guitar was that of the composer not having a formal musical education but of a simple but talented minstrel perhaps from Scotland or Ireland who, given the rustic feel of his music, with its dance like movements, was employed to provide the music for local village dances.