(Enisai/Elite)
Herald rating: * * * *
Review: Graham Reid
While she's hardly a household name, Namtchylak from the central Asian republic of Tuva (where the throat singers come from) has racked up impressive credentials and more than a dozen albums.
She's performed with Russian and German avant-garde jazz musicians and has melded traditional Tuvan folk sounds with ambient folk, out-there saxophone and loping world music.
This time out, she's recorded in Milan with a group of Italian and German musicians and samplers, and brought many aspects of her history together in 10 trip-hop and reggae-framed tracks which grow more appealing with each hearing.
Dance Of The Eagle rides a long, loose-limbed groove, Like A Transparent Shadow occupies the ground between Asian ambience and Anglo-folk, there's a touch of dark, restrained funk-rock on the eerily entrancing Order To Survive, and Let The Sunshine could be a more mellow Chrissie Hynde in ballad mode over a reggae bassline lifted from Black Uhuru before she takes it elsewhere with some echoed wailing.
And Tuva Blues is exactly that, an aching solo voice which could have come from a back porch in Mississippi but which then opens up thanks to deep drums, drones and trickling guitar into a hypnotic piece of supple backwards-tapes and a vocal attack not dissimilar to a restrained Yoko Ono. Much better than that suggests.
Namtchylak's is not a voice you'll hear every day, or even a name you can easily pronounce, but don't let that put you off.
This trip-hop world music from Tuva owes more to the downtown New York arty set and European clubs than you could imagine.
Very welcome.
<i>Sainkho Namtchylak:</i> Stepmother City
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