To listen to audio on Rock Paper Scissors you'll need to Get the Flash Player

log in to access downloads
Sample Track 1:
"Tortadur" from Tortadur
Sample Track 2:
"Girya" from Tortadur
Layer 2
Album Review

Click Here to go back.
Pop Matters, Album Review >>

Sevara Nazarkhan: Tortadur

By Deanne Sole 14 October 2011

The Uzbek singer Sevara Nazarkhan pitched herself to the English-speaking world nine years ago with Yol Bolsin, an album mediated through the swirling, mystic brain of the French producer Hector Zazou. This new, self-released album, Tortadur, is acoustic, and the instruments in the indigenous backing ensemble keep their personalities pert and intact without being trimmed or swirled. The traditional tunes are slow and stirring, her voice glides forward with weights on its heels, and the elderly musicians pace patiently after her. The pace is perhaps too slow as the tracks threaten to melt together, but the decoration is subtle and lovely: The tick-tock in “Yovvoi Tanovar” is like a pencil tapped loosely on a wineglass, and Nazarkhan’s voice, swimming, swimming on, is the eternal coexisting with the temporal.

 10/14/11 >> go there
Click Here to go back.