Recent Blog Posts
Diego Amador on Songlines and Audiophile Audition
post a comment | posted 4 days ago
"Diego Amador can make a sublime flamenco disc playing piano just as well as he can do singing, with that reedy throaty voice... Amador weaves magic into his performance. Jazz is his touchstones, and his technical fireworks are always considered, offering a sprightly, quasi-brooding intensity that cuts to the heart rather than just showing off anything flashy. There's an assured emotional coherence here that makes the disc very compelling; Amador may draw on a host of influences - past and present - but he's very much his own man, taking charge of everything while playing piano, guitar, mandola and bass."
Natacha Atlas featured on WNYC & Lucid Culture
post a comment | posted 5 days ago
"...They began with several lush, haunting, sweepingly beautiful romantic songs much in the style of Fairuz, who's clearly the main influence on Ana Hina. Onstage, Atlas displays considerably more lower register, and more bite, than she does in the studio, several times going into long melismatic passages that were very warmly received. They also ran through a bouncy noir cabaret number as well as a long, well over ten-minute, absolutely entrancing cover of Black Is the Color. "
November at World Village: Diego Amador & Uxía
post a comment | posted 6 days ago
Flamenco and jazz pianist Diego Amador evokes the feeling of a juerga, or informal jam session, on his second album for World Village, Rìo de los Canasteros ("River of the Basket-Makers"). Nominated for Best Flamenco Album at the Latin Grammys...
Not-So-Recent Blog Posts
"Douga Mansa" in Songlines Top of the World & Sonic Boomers
post a comment | posted 1 week ago
'This album is comprised of single-take recordings,' say the liner notes of this fourth album from the US-based kora musician Mamadou Diabaté. While Malian-born Diabaté, barely in his 30s, riffs and rolls the harp's 20-odd strings through its paces, one can't help but give a thankful thought that some music, somewhere, is still made in this way. The result of this style of recording from someone so young and talented is 12 tracks of clean, clear, musical excellence, pushing Diabaté to his limit, while he keeps masterful control of the whole creation.
Kalhor in Gramophone & Terakaft on Emusic's Afrobeat feature
post a comment | posted 1 week ago
"superbly conceived, organically evolved and wonderfully rich...The buoying rhythms of 'Parvaz' (Flight) and ardently expressed melodies in such works as 'Ascending Bird', the album's first selection, are entrancing. So too is the elegiac, plangent extended opening of the nearly-half-hour-long title work...Kalhor and the Brooklyn Riders paint portraits of such suffering with sensitivity and grace, but burbles of irrepressible joy burst out of the concluding moments of 'Silent City'"
Natacha Atlas in L.A. Weekly & the Star-Ledger
post a comment | posted 2 weeks ago
Belgian singer Natacha Atlas describes herself as a "human Gaza Strip," and her latest album, Ana Hina, is a wondrous blend of influences, rhythms and languages...Whether she's slowing the beat down to linger delicately over a single romantic word or stirring up her full Mazeeka Ensemble to launch an epic journey like "Lammebada," Atlas is perpetually enchanting.
Natacha Atlas in Condé Nast Traveler
post a comment | posted 2 weeks ago
Atlas takes her tributes in new directions, too. "El Asil" was popularized by the Egyptian heartthrob crooner Abdel Halim Hafez, but she modernized the tune with vamping horns and piano. Elsewhere, she throws in bits of tango and on "La Vida Callada," a Spanish song set to a poem taken from Frida Kahlo's diary, she collaborates with Barcelonan vocalist and oud player Clara Sanabras. Atlas aptly describes "Hayati Inta" as a "Berber-flavored number&reinvented&as the Doors meet Mingus." Somehow a version of Nina Simone's famous "Black is the Color" fits in perfectly, too. It all makes me long for cold Manchurian nights.
Tinariwen at Coachella 2009!
post a comment | posted 2 weeks ago
World famous taureg group Tinariwen returns to the U.S. in Spring of 2009, including a stop at Coachella!
Natacha Atlas in SF Chronicle: "Atlas's voice - a heavenly gift"
post a comment | posted 2 weeks ago
If there's one word that Natacha Atlas' fans use most often to describe the singer, it's "goddess" - as in "Natacha is such a frigging goddess!" (a YouTube comment) and "She's the goddess of funky belly dancers everywhere" (a review at RootsWorld magazine) and "It's simple, really: Natacha is a musical Goddess" (a write-up at Amazon.com). Yes, Atlas' voice - a heavenly gift that trills and reverberates with emotion - makes her stand out, as do her striking looks and belly-dance moves, but it's Atlas' theatrical style (she dressed as an Egyptian queen for the cover of her 1995 debut album, "Diaspora") that solidifies her image as a diva of the highest order.
Mamadou Diabate in Muzikifan & Conde Nast Traveler
post a comment | posted 2 weeks ago
"Mamadou attacks the strings with passion and his fingers fly. To me he is a superior talent and I would rank him above Foday Musa Suso or his famous cousin Toumani Diabate...you just have to hear this album to realize he is a brilliant creative artist...It's all recorded in one take, without overdubbing, the liner assures us, because otherwise we wouldn't believe it, so sweeping is the flood of scales, the torrent of fluild riffs."