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Sample Track 1:
"Khaira" from Timbuktu Tarab
Sample Track 2:
"Djaba" from Timbuktu Tarab
Layer 2
Album Review

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The Waterloo Record, Album Review >>

The Sway Machinery

House of Friendly Ghosts Vol. 1 (JDub)

Jeremiah Lockwood must be a very persuasive man. The New York bandleader, who has a solo career as a blues performer and also plays with East European electro hybrid Balkan Beat Box, has not only corralled some of the city’s best players into the Sway Machinery, including the Antibalas horn section, Bell Orchestre’s Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahss Brian Chase, but he’s also hauled the band to Africa to play the legendary Festival in the Desert in the remote north of Mali — where he was surely the only performer there to sing in Hebrew.

Apparently the band was rapturously received, and the goodwill spilled into a recording session in Bamako the following week. The result, this second album by the Sway Machinery, features master Malian singer Khaira Arby, Vieux Farka Toure and some younger acts they discovered at the festival.

A good resumé doesn’t necessarily make a good record, of course. In this case, however, it does. Though obviously steeped in an eclectic stew of Malian influences, the Sway Machinery don’t sound like they’re embarking on an anthropological project. There’s more than enough of their own personality; the horn section can do pretty much anything, the drums on a track like Youba owe far more to Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham than African rhythms, and even when Arby takes the lead vocals, it sounds remarkably different than her own work.

The only weak links are Lockwood’s own earnest vocals and his lyrics — one example, “With my wings behind me/ cumbersome and unwieldly,” could be a direct metaphor for his writing. Thankfully, the band behind him offers more than a few pleasant distractions at all times, and Arby steals the show whenever she takes the mike.

Download: Youba, Sourgou, Gawad Teriamou

 03/24/11 >> go there
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