Various Artists – Album Roundup

Blood has a bad rep, but it’s honestly a good thing; there’s blood all over Shall We Live Forever? Blood and darkness. The hot blood of life and passion; the welcoming dark of all-night celebration and vodka-induced blindness… I’m pretty certain the answer to the question posed in the title is ‘no, so what are we waiting for?’ This is communal gypsy folk, with equal parts groove and lyricism (and great playing), a life-affirming panegyric to the sacred pain and hedonism of life. Some tunes are also on the earlier Budmo!, but get it anyway. It’s impossible not to like.

Asgeir & Mo – Danza de Andalucia (Flamenco fusion)

Flamenco is a music that lends itself to fusions, and that has been successfully fused in many different contexts, but it is also the site of a pronounced ideology of purism. The kind of cultural essentialism that has afflicted British folk music, or the blues, is still probably still the norm in Andalucia: this is not to say that Flamenco’s practitioners are unwelcoming to outsiders, but they are expected to come as respectful supplicants to the tradition, and those that skirt its fringes are clearly aware of this. I’ve heard Gabriela Quintero at a concert, sounding positively anxious to disavow any claim to the name of Flamenco, on the grounds that ‘those guys will go fucking mental’. There are reasons for this purism, beyond the usual ethnic insecurities …