Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as anything I’ve heard.
For all they've inspired swathes of the most crushingly mundane music of the modern age from Sheeran on down, Coldplay have always been at their best at their most grandiose. That is, when they shake off Chris Martin's I'm-a-normal-bloke schtick and let their romanticism – in melodies, arrangements and fairytale lyrics – fly free. So it sounded promising when it emerged they were releasing a double album full of global influences: maybe they're really going to go for it this time?
The joy of Afro-Beat comes from the intricate play of polyrhythms, eloquently constructed around the subtle interplay of guitars, bass, backing vocals, percussion and horns: each voice follows a distinct path, and the combination of each in a rich and complex whole is both powerfully mind-blowing and irresistibly danceable.
K-Music has become one of the highlights of the autumn cultural calender since it launched in 2014, bringing an eclectic range of Korean artists and bands, from pop and rock to jazz and folk, and all the gradations between. Next Sunday Korean Pansori opera comes to Kings Place, while Park Jiha’s beguiling looped soundscapes come to Rich Mix on 17th October, and Kyungso Park returns to the Southbank with her zither-like gayageum and new band, SB Circle on 29 October.
Avant-folk differs from traditional music, as it isn't rooted in place but draws its inspiration from a cultural universe without boundaries. Širom are three Slovenian multi-instrumentalists, and the extraordinary array of sounds they make could at various times be mistaken as Chinese, African, Balinese or Appalachian.
Memória das Águas hasn’t figured in lists of great Brazilian albums. Its creator Fernando Falcão isn’t as celebrated as fellow countryman and musical maverick Tom Zé. The reissue of this arresting yet previously obscure album should help change these oversights.
This was a year of superb musical standards, smooth organisation and a real sense of celebration. In the last couple of years, WOMAD being more liberal and internationalist than nearly anywhere else, there was a sense in the air of a collective political shock - maybe the future wasn’t with our tribe of happy cultural globalists after all. This year, even with the new PM, there was a more defiant sense that the WOMAD spirit will prevail after the current nationalist neurosis blows off some steam.
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut.
Damon Albarn isn’t just a national treasure but an international one. He seems to spread his reach so widely, with a mix of curiosity and boundless energy, a great deal of discernment and a vision as different as possible from the narrow-minded attitudes that feed the Brexit frenzy.