Фирма No Format

Artist: Ballake Sissoko; Artist: Vincent Segal Label: No Format

Kouyate-Neerman is the shortened version of the names Lansine Kouyate and David Neerman. Lansine is a Paris-based and Malian-born balafon extraordinaire, while David is a French musician with piano and percussion training. David plays the vibraphone throughout the album, with additional noise effects and distortions for a truly, avant-garde musical experience that is more urban than traditional. The mostly instrumental music stems from the double bass, balafon, vibraphone, kora, and drums. The only vocals on the album occur on 'Haiti' by Anthony Joseph. Famed kora maestro, Ballake Sissoko, adds his personal touches throughout with crystalline results. Skyscrapers & Deities surfs a fine line between traditionalism and modernism, whilst covering new age, jazz, downtempo, trance, and experimental genres in the process. Kouyate-Neerman is a solid duo with something to offer for everyone. Record Label: No Format Style: Jazz/World

Misja Fitzgerald Michel pays tribute to the magic of Nick Drake s music on this mostly instrumental album where Me shell Ndgeocello lends her voice and a few words to a song. A manner of saying that the voice of the Englishman is heard first and foremost in the notes and the rhythms he left to posterity. What Misja envies in Nick Drake is the musician and his spirit of invention, the incomparable beauty of his songs, the breadth of his language, the sophistication of his harmonies. The artist s glow rather than his soul s pain. It is only fair. But the Frenchman s interpretations offer much more than that : they are exactly on key. The acoustic guitar is at the core of a disc that is much more than just another guitar record. First because here and there, other influences can be heard. Like that of the barrier-breaking cellist Olivier Koundouno, the arranger and lighting technician Nicolas Repac or the songwriter Hugh Coltman. Then because Misja, far from the isolated ghetto of guitar music , chose to adventure onto the boundless fields of musicality alone. His aesthetic choices stem from that adventure, that is, quite simply, a yearning for poetry and sensation. This explains his escapades towards baroque music or blues or even those appropriate freedoms taken with the compositions, either explored in the full scope of their harmonic possibilities, or brought back to their quintessential expression. Thus, everywhere, this lively celebration of a spirit of adventure and openness, that brings together a composer and an interpret who are forty years apart, draws a common space in which the inspirations and aspirations of one and the other can come together and mingle. Thus is the shining and initiatory path taken by Misja Fitzgerald Michel, on an album that sheds new light on the work of Nick Drake as much as on his own expression. Record Label: No Format Style: Jazz