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| Thephoenix |
 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....full text |
| Insound |
| VINYL FORMAT. This is the fourth release in Honest Jon's series of albums exploring the earliest 78s held in the EMI Hayes Archive. Open Strings is a dazzling selection of virtuoso string-playing from Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, all recorded in the 1920s, and pretty much unheard ever since. In addition, Open Strings includes a disc of newly-commissioned responses to the themes in this music by underground luminaries committed to the drone such as Sir Richard Bishop of legendary Sun City Girls renown, West Coast psych-guitarist Ben Chasny aka Six Organs Of Admittance, UK folk-guitarist Rick Tomlinson aka Voice Of The Seven Woods, and Western Massachusetts' raga-inspired duo, MV And EE. From resonant bow-drone, to frenetic fret-runs to delicate, circular acoustic musings to sitar fever-dreams, no matter the nationality, there is a resonance and truth in this music that is ancient, timeless and transcendent. Scorchers past and present, every one. Other artists include: Micah Blue Smaldone, Michael Flower, Charlie Parr, Bruce Licher, Paul Metzger, and Steffen Basho-Junghans....full text |
| Strangeglue |
| The first disc, the one which holds twenty of said ‘virtuoso recordings from the Middle East’, culls recordings from archives. I do not have the benefit of information telling me when, where or how they were recorded, but from the sound quality I feel I can place them loosely between the 1920’s and 1950’s. It really doesn’t matter however, because they are timeless not just in the foreign antiquity they describe for me but also in their momentary nature, many are improvisations. Some may well run the gauntlet of a tightly scripted composition, or draw on the themes of traditional songs, but in the pauses between runs and trills I feel I can see the musician surfacing briefly from a trance to choose a new motif, a new scale around which to demonstrate their skills. I believe I hear the Cümbüş which is an instrument that was developed in Turkey in the early part of the last century, one which resembles the banjo. I also hear the Oud, an eleven string instrument which by its popularity might be described as the guitar of the middle-east, and the Saz, a thin, delicate instrument that demands excellent phrasing from the musician. One exceptional element of this part of the compilation is the handful of tracks from bowed instruments, perhaps played on derivatives of the spike fiddle. With wails and moans they provide a vocal texture that breaks up the flow of percussive picks and strums, preventing the disc as a whole from merging in an unfamiliar ear. They are mournful to my ears, but describe the wide sadness of a people, their history and their place in the land. Perhaps I am projecting some these feelings onto the music, but there is a contemplative mood to these pieces which seems to speak a universal language. Though they dance around obvious melodies, they also pause, quiver and stretch a note until it dies, in a way which injects personality, patience and emotion into the interpretations. I’m instantly drawn to this kind of music. Sami Chawa’s nimble and melodic spike fiddle piece ‘Eerabi Fil Sahra’ momentarily bursts into rapid see-sawing up and down the strings, recalling a performance of solo Hungarian fiddle playing by A Hawk and a Hacksaw contributor, and Hun Hangar Ensemble member Ferenc Kovács....full text |
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