CD Reviews

Various artists | Open Strings: 1920s Middle Eastern Recordings

Honest Jon's (2009)

By DEVIN KING | May 6, 2009

4.0 Stars

Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.

Stretched over two discs (or four LPs), this fourth release, Open Strings, draws parallels between string improvisation of 1920s Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and such contemporary personalities as Sir Richard Bishop, MV and EE, and Six Organs of Admittance. The archival first half is mostly solo string players — anything from oud to fiddle maestros — engaged in the taqsim, a Middle Eastern improvisational method based on traditional modal themes. The second half is newly commissioned responses to the archival material.

Most of the latter connect Middle Eastern to Western modes: Rick Tomlinson turns in a surf-guitar piece, Charlie Parr a back-porch hoedown, and Bruce Licher a very-out-of-place Kid A–inspired electronic work. The archival material is stunning in its historical interest and musicianship; the responses are intriguing but unnecessary additions. I could have wished for a single disc at a cheaper price, or else two discs of archival material.

Review: No One Knows About Persian Cats
The options for filmmakers, musicians, and other artists in Iran have dwindled to about two: arrest or exile.
Newton's New Art Center exposes heavy metal from within
Named for a Candlemass song, staged in a former church, and curated by a pair of noise-loving MassArt grads, the upcoming group show "We Still See the Black" brings a thunderous charge of wrathful, subtle, beguiling, and teeming contemporary art to Newton's New Art Center beginning September 15.
Review: The Devil's Double
Watching this litany of murder and debauchery in the gilded splendor of Saddam's Baghdad, in which Dominic Cooper plays both Saddam's psycho son Uday and the Iraqi good guy Latif, who was forced to serve as his double, I thought: this is like Scarface, but with a difference.
The Year in Monkey News
Simian news items, compiled for your reading pleasure.
Whatever happened to Danville's giant mystery monkey?
The giant monkey of Danville was my symbol, back then, of the fin-de-siècle nadir in media fluffery, thankfully obsolesced in one grim morning.
Review: Circumstance
Circumstance begins like an early Kiarostami film, but with schoolgirls in hijabs instead of schoolboys in sweaters.
Review: A Separation
Somehow, despite an increasingly repressive regime that has jailed many prominent filmmakers, including the world renowned auteur Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema continues to produce some of the world's subtlest and most illuminating films about the relationships between men and women, and the conflicts inherent in all social units, starting with the family.
What's gotten into Egypt?
Being a dictator is a tough business. Just ask Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Azerbaijani meat with chestnuts and sour plums
If the Committee of Basic World Knowledge had given me a surprise test, a world map with directions to fill in all the country names, I would have missed Azerbaijan.
Review: RISD's '2011 Faculty Biennial' impresses and inspires
The Rhode Island School of Design's "2011 Faculty Biennial" at the RISD Museum (20 North Main Street, Providence, through March 20) features more than 200 teachers for a varied buffet ranging from tangled noodley junk sculpture to sleek architecture designs to loose abstract paintings.
Review: A Marine's Guide to Fishing
On the one-year anniversary of a life-changing incident on a foreign battleground, a Marine (Matthew Pennington) begins to take up his old life again.
Less

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Iraq, More

| More

view all

[ 05/30 ] Lindsay Straw & the Ivy Leaf @ Blue

[ 05/30 ] PuppeTyranny: "Beans! Beans! Beans!" @ Geno's

[ 05/30 ] Always, Patsy Cline @ Ogunquit Playhouse

ARTICLES BY DEVIN KING

FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN | July 29, 2009
Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.

SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM | May 27, 2009
The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.

THE MOVING PICTURES | May 12, 2009
If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.

VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS | May 06, 2009
Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.

PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT | April 14, 2009
Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."