Search dance music

Review: Souvenirs is the first vocal album from Ethiopian nun, composer and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru. It was recorded between 1977 and 1985 in a lo-fi setup in her family home in Addis Ababa shortly before she was exiled to Jerusalem. Playing the piano and singing through a boom box, Gebru captured the solemn mood of the time as she faced the prospect of leaving her homeland to escape the upheaval brought about the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia. Her playing fuses Western classical with Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music, while her Amharic lyrics touch on the tumultuous situation she found herself in, in profoundly poetic ways. The accompanying 16-page booklet offers translations of these words, so the message can land for listeners beyond the powerful impact of the recordings themselves.

Review: Pianist Ryo Fukui first emerged into the international spotlight with 1976's Scenery and the year-later follow-up Mellow Dream, fermenting his name as a jazz progenitor for the ages. Despite his late-bloomer status (in contrast to the prodigal assumption that most pianists should ideally start learning to play before the age of seven, he began to teach himself piano at the age of 22), Fukui dazzled just as brightly back then as he did now, emphasising his instrument as an expressive locus and foreground, and wringing out from it a many-faced kind of emotion. If it weren't for "the algorithm", we'd wager that this reissue via Trio Japan wouldn't be going ahead; it's only in the era of YouTube and Google that Scenery really saw an uptick in fan rapace. We're not sure what the resurrective tipping point for this album really was; whether the distinctive red cover, or the shocking, piquing plinks of Fukui's playing, we're more than proud to help usher it along into the hands of the next gen (on limited edition cassette, no less!).