World > Asian World

Advantages: AMAZING CD AND BOOK
Disadvantages: none

this is such a briliant cd and book guide. i would highly reccomend this to all indian musicians and people interested in studying indian classical music , specifically north indian aka hindustani music. it has a deep explanation of the basics of indian music so that you can truly appreciate the ragas (melodic structures) and talas (rhythmic cyles) and more features unique to indian music. the cds are also great as they are thoroughly explained in ... Read review

Advantages: Pure, zen, beauty of cosmic proportions
Disadvantages: None

Pure Japanese Spirit. Lullaby for the Moon is a perfect compilation of ancient Japanese music. It is beyond perfect, as a matter of fact. There are no words to describe the atmosphere of this unique piece of work. Inzan Tanaka, Ichizan Hoshida, Osamu Shimizu, Sajura and Ensho Yamakawa seem to bind their work together on a level that has never been equalled in folklore. This album was released in 1997, although most of the tracks are several hundreds ...
...very long, suiting the meditative feel. Komoriuta opens with soft plucked koto and ripples of shakuhachi flute, as fragile as cascading cherry blossom down a waterfall. Toge Hachi-Ri leads us eight miles through a mountain pass. It is a bit like trying to picture what Honshu would of looked like back in 60 AD; still, perfect, and with the most intelligent use of silence I have ever heard. Kuon No Hikari kicks in with vibrant shakuhachi flute and ... Read review

Advantages: A sublime fusion of roots and more modern music
Disadvantages: Not as good as some contemporaries

This is the self-named album Kal by Kal! Kal are a Serbian band from the small village of Valjevo but are now based in Belgrade, they fuse traditional roma music with a very slight amount of pop/crooning, they are one of very few Serbian artists that still play Balkan music in the traditional sense as Serbian music is these days liittered with keyboards in general. Kal (Romani for black) were once described by a BBC journalist in Leicester as "the ...
...spot on in this case. Kal dress in black suits and hats which instantaneously gives them a mafia look, this image is quickly broken though as they're jolly outlook on life woos the crowd where ever they are quite quickly. The band themselves do a lot of work in Serbia to integrate the roma people in to Serbia in general through theatre productions spanning from Budapest to Belgrade and Bucharest, each year they also run a school (Amala School in ... Read review

Advantages: Superbly talented musicians playing good music
Disadvantages: Flute irritates me sometimes

...throughout the 18th century. Kobzar is brought out by the German record label Eastblok Music and was released in March 2008. 1 - Vstup Is a 19 second song which I'm unaware of the point of, perhaps it has significance. 10/10 or 0/10 depending on how you look at it. 2 - Efir - 4:34 A jolly song where accordian, drumming and later trumpet features highly with a catchy chorus and impressive near orient or latino "aaah's" (if you know what I mean!) ...
...Tramvayem Violin, trumpet and accoustic guitar heavy track to start off with yet another upbeat feeling accompanied with a bit of crooning and later gets a more funky, jazzy feel to it. Insane song to dance to. 8/10 4 - Message Starts off with a heavy metal/hard rock style and moves into reggae with space noises plus the occasional folks instrument (possibly bagpipes) and later jazz trumpets, sang in Polish mostly due to the song being written ... Read review

Advantages: The antithesis of commercial rubbish.
Disadvantages: Very few.

This is must buy as along with being great music is also a documentation of rarely recorded works of a fleeting genre. A number of the artists recorded have never previously been recorded at all and some are now deceased, since these recordings were made. Sufi music is Islamic in nature but has very little to do with organised religion. The music itself is not written or performed to any set standard but rather being truly folk music is passed down ...
...the genre thus evolves quite organically. These CDs concentrate on Pakistani Sufi music which grew out of Islamic mysticism that developed around the Indus river from the 8th century onwards. The content varies from deeply haunting to light-hearted to the almost surreal in Ghulam Ali Qawwal and Party's "Deewana hai Deewana". The recordings include the unsung masters Pathane Khan and Allan Fakir as well as various tribal instrumentals from Sindh and ... Read review