HANSPETER KUENZLER
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Wau Wau Collectiv, "Mariage" (Sahel Sounds)

Not entirely new, I admit - this splendid album was released in November 2022. However, I've only just discovered it. It's the second from this collection of musicians from Senegal and Sweden. The idea developed organically when Swedish producer Karl Jonas Winqvist (recently involved with the James Yorkston/Nina Persson-LP) ended up in a Senegalese village with a large community of musicians  (and a dance centre) and began to record all sorts of sessions. Thus, we have joyous guitar solos, hip-hop-beats, childrens' singalongs, balafon, kora, synths, flutes - and some fabulously gruff vocals. Sparkling stuff!

 

One Leg One Eye, "And Take The Black Worm With Me" (Nyahh)

Another belated discovery, this. One Leg One Eye is the solo guise of Ian Lynch, founding member of Dublin's superb experimental folk band Lankum, and this album was released last October. Freed from any outside pressures throughout 2021, Lynch began to explore sounds and song structures that wouldn't fit in with Lankum. Building these massive walls of shimmering, abstract drone from field recordings (in the disused factory where his father once worked, for instance) as well his usual organic instruments and a number of effect pedals, and adding his own more traditional vocals, he has created a deep, dark and mesmerising well of an album.