Red River Dialect - Broken Stay Open Sky - VINYL LP

Whilst touring during the early months of 2018 in support of Broken Stay Open Sky, their fourth album and first for tag Paradise of Bachelors, Red River Dialect uncovered a new depth of communication in their playing, and the follow-up bears the fruit. Abundance Welcoming Ghosts finds the British folk-rock band relaxing into a natural, playful confidence tangling with the thickets, wading in the river, digging the peat, and disappearing into the mountains. It was recorded at Mwnci Studios, in a quiet valley in Southwest Wales, during four days in August 2018, just a month before the band's songwriter David Morris left the UK for a nine-month meditation retreat at a remote Buddhist monastery on the cliffs of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. This plan had not yet taken shape when he wrote these songs during the spring of 2018. By the time the band reached the studios, the imminent hiatus lent a poignant and celebratory atmosphere to the sessions. The compositions had not been fully formed prior to recording, but any pressure was transmuted into invigoration, resulting in the jubilant energy that adorns even the most turbulent songs. The album title gestures towards a fullness that the songs fulfill, a sonic and lyrical plenitude, but any density achieved by the band opens up further space. This expansiveness bears testament to the skill of long-term collaborator and guide Jimmy Robertson (Michael Chapman, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode), who engineered and mixed the songs. Guest musicians Joan Shelley, who sings the hidden spaces on InchSnowdonInch and InchPiano,Inch and Tara Jane O'Neil (Rodan, the Sonora Pine), who plays sweet aching slide guitar on InchMy Friend,Inch complement the core sextet. Ed Sanders' violin alternates between soaring with crisp highland sadness on InchBV KistvaenInch and burying jaws into the flesh of songs like InchSalvation.Inch Coral Kindred-Boothby

Nahawa Doumbia's new album Kanawa concisely captures this current moment in Malian history. The singer, whose storied career spans more than four decades, reflects on the immigration crisis from the Malian perspective in the title of her new album Kanawa. Across eight songs recorded in Bamako with a band including traditional and modern instruments, Doumbia merges her early work that relied on a spare expression of her trademark didadi rhythm with the bombastic range of contemporary Malian pop. The beautifully complex musical accompaniment that results is courtesy of the large ensemble she pulled together with producer and arranger (and day one collaborator) N'gou Bagayoko. The band features two highly expressive Malian string instruments, the ngoni and the slightly smaller kamalé ngoni, as well as a variety of percussion, drum programming, karignan (a metal scraper) and acoustic and electric guitars. Doumbia's daughter, a celebrated singer with her own group and busy concert schedule, Doussou Bagayoko sings on InchAdjorobena,Inch a song about patience, tolerance and living in peace. Doumbia weaves together a roadmap of her psyche when it comes to the good and bad life has to offer. She talks about marriage and women leaving home to join another through the metaphor of a tree in the garden; she includes gunshot samples in the song InchFoliwilenInch to honor the bravery of hunters, soldiers and other courageous people; she uses a bird in InchDjougohInch to talk about lazy people; and, in InchNdiagnekoInch she advises people to ignore critics, just do you. Mali has gone through an intense period of regional strife and terrorist incidents over the last ten years and Doumbia roots the album in tragic local concerns with deep global implications. InchThe meaning of Kanawa is so simple. We see our children trying to cross the ocean all the time. I said that many of our chil

Whilst touring during the early months of 2018 in support of Broken Stay Open Sky, their fourth album and first for tag Paradise of Bachelors, Red River Dialect uncovered a new depth of communication in their playing, and the follow-up bears the fruit. Abundance Welcoming Ghosts finds the British folk-rock band relaxing into a natural, playful confidence tangling with the thickets, wading in the river, digging the peat, and disappearing into the mountains. It was recorded at Mwnci Studios, in a quiet valley in Southwest Wales, during four days in August 2018, just a month before the band's songwriter David Morris left the UK for a nine-month meditation retreat at a remote Buddhist monastery on the cliffs of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. This plan had not yet taken shape when he wrote these songs during the spring of 2018. By the time the band reached the studios, the imminent hiatus lent a poignant and celebratory atmosphere to the sessions. The compositions had not been fully formed prior to recording, but any pressure was transmuted into invigoration, resulting in the jubilant energy that adorns even the most turbulent songs. The album title gestures towards a fullness that the songs fulfill, a sonic and lyrical plenitude, but any density achieved by the band opens up further space. This expansiveness bears testament to the skill of long-term collaborator and guide Jimmy Robertson (Michael Chapman, Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode), who engineered and mixed the songs. Guest musicians Joan Shelley, who sings the hidden spaces on InchSnowdonInch and InchPiano,Inch and Tara Jane O'Neil (Rodan, the Sonora Pine), who plays sweet aching slide guitar on InchMy Friend,Inch complement the core sextet. Ed Sanders' violin alternates between soaring with crisp highland sadness on InchBV KistvaenInch and burying jaws into the flesh of songs like InchSalvation.Inch Coral Kindred-Boothby