The sensibility that ran from Dowland to Joy Division crops up elsewhere as well: in Portuguese fado, in the Sodade of the Cape Verde islands; in Klezmer laments. Fifty years ago, the women patrons of Bucharest cafés were, reputedly, wild for falsetto Gypsy singers, and the greatest was Dona Dumitru Siminica. A new re-release captures him in full melancholy flow. Siminica’s songs are paeans to misery. “I was having too good a time,” he wails, “I didn’t notice that she loved the other man.”

These songs were recorded in the early 1960s in Romania, but have been scrubbed up with startling clarity by Marc Elsner. The remastering makes them sound fresh but, paradoxically, even older. You can easily imagine the adolescent Patrick Leigh Fermor, on the way to Constantinople, stopping off between the woods and the water to listen to this in a café. As with Dowland, Siminica’s unhappiness is immensely cheering.

‘A Life Less Lived: The Goth Box’ is out now on Rhino. ‘Songs From The Labyrinth: Music By John Dowland’ is released by Deutsche  Grammophon on October 9. ‘Sounds From A Bygone Age Volume 3’ is out on Asphalt Tango on October 10.

 (excerpt)