Yiddish, klezmer and eastern European traditional music are the energetic inspirations for Fran & Flora’s second album together, their first on Stroud-based new music label Hidden Notes. Cellist Francesca Ter-Berg and violinist Flora Curzon also compose with voices and electronics, and their album’s opening track, Nudity, announces their ambitious intentions. Plucked strings whip up a hot-blooded Sirba (a Romanian/Jewish 6/8 rhythm) against a high violin drone and a skittering vocal of the Meredith Monk school. A delirious, desirous mood ensues.
It’s a strangely accessible record. Wordless harmonies create immediate, even poppy effects on the Nign and Hold Me Close, which should interest fans of shimmery, alternative groups like Blonde Redhead and Stealing Sheep; they’re even Radio 2-friendly on the gorgeous Fishelekh Gefinen – To Catch a Fish, by Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt. Layers of sound are built up like a modern dance track before the drums, played by Snapped Ankles’ Ursula Russell, arrive with the heft of a hip-hop break.
The duo’s love of archival recordings and recovered manuscripts is clear across the variety of their song choices, from the beautifully tentative Feygele – Little Bird, adapted from a popular Russian song, to the twisted epic majesty of Flowers for Innocence, based on the Transylvanian Gyöngyvirágos. Ter-Berg and Curzon never smother the folk origins of their influences but explore them kaleidoscopically, exploding the potential of their colours and patterns through their instruments’ long bows, plucks and scrapes.
Other highlights include the ecstatically joyful Greek folk tune Kick Up In 9 and a terror-inducing Yikhes – Lineage, in which they somehow make a violin sound like the soft wail of a distant ship’s siren. This 12-song set time-travels brilliantly between solid folk origins and avant garde play with a surprise at every corner.
Also out this month
Toby Hay’s mid-Wales cottage industry of gorgeous, largely instrumental folk music reaches its highest peak yet with After a Pause (Cambrian), a record he made himself over three summer days with double bassist Aidan Thorne. Tracks like Bard flow like warm waterfalls, Hay’s cascading arpeggios landing on the soft supportive bedrock provided by Thorne’s supple strings. David Murphy’s Cuimhne Ghlinn: Explorations in Irish Music for Pedal Steel Guitar (Rollercoaster) is an intriguing proposition, recasting ancient Irish slow airs and harp tunes in ambient electronic arrangements. Coming across like a 21st-century child of Mark Knopfler’s Local Hero soundtrack, it’s occasionally very moving, at times oddly Balearic, the Hawaiian roots of his warm pitch-shifting instrument spangling through. Thrill Jockey’s occasional forays into excellent American folk continue with a new release, Needlefall, by Magic Tuber Stringband, blending field recordings of birds and forests, Appalachian and Greek folk traditions and free improvisation on clarinets and saxophones.
