DVA

Usually, I feel confident that regular listeners and/or readers have come to recognise the direction and slant of my taste, and that a recommendation of an album of the month will be consistent with what I have recommended before.

This record defies my own expectations of my usual preferences, so I can’t be confident about anything, only report my reactions to it. I like its playfulness, its capacity to surprise without trying to be silly or quirky just for the sake of it. There are many flavours, with vocals, guitars and saxophones leaving the longest-lasting taste and any number of tunes which confirm their catchiness each time the album is played again.

My World Service producer Radek Boschetty, who is himself Czech, reports that DVA means Pair in Czech, reflecting that there are two protagonists, who refer to themselves as He and She, no names. The songs appear to be sung in a made-up language, something between ‘Bad Hungarian’ and ‘Imaginary Inuit’, as they convey the experiences and thoughts of people who live inside the Arctic Circle.

On first receiving an album, I usually work my way through it with a series of asterisks against the contenders to be played on the radio. On an album of 14 tracks, three or four stars would normally be a good score. On this one, most of the tracks earned stars and have been played one by one, with ‘Dua Dua’ earning repeat plays after its melody got stuck in my head.

Not much more to say, except I have also been listening to Moondog’s two Honest Jons compilations recently, and the three albums are more or less interchangeable.
As we area about to enter September, this is turning out to be my album of the year.

There remains the difficulty of getting hold of a record with no UK distributor, which is simply solved by visiting the website of the group’s label, Indies, where there are links for purchasing the CD itself and downloading songs one by one: http://www.indies.eu/en/alba/214/fonok/?idn=1

CG - BBC / CHARLIE GILLETT

Described by the record label as ‘Non existent nations Folklore’ or, Tango-cabaret-circus pop-kitchen beatbox or freakfolk, this CD features 15 tracks described by the artists as ‘Songs of non-existent bands in non-existent world languages put together during travels through the kitchen. Each non existent region has its own representative each non-existent language its own translation’

With sparing use of saxophone, clarinet, melodica, guitar and child’s piano the music on this CD could easily be total nonsense but is in fact strangely compelling. The duo, Barbora Kratochvílová and Jan Kratochvíl from the Czech Republic, recorded this album combining human voices and acoustic instruments without using any fancy recording equipment back in their North Bohemian village of Padouchov. It was later mixed and mastered in Germany by well regarded musician and producer, Jayrope from Berlin.

Although the production uses a variety of loops and reversals this CD is thankfully not overproduced nor full of technical wizardry, instead the clarity of the voices and instruments break through to make the whole a triumphal journey around the imaginary world that is Jan & Barbora’s kitchen. And part of the fun of this album is trying to guess which (non existent) country each of these tracks is supposed to represent, and whose (non existent) language is being parodied.

These songs are not so much copies of world music styles but parodies of those styles, for instance ‘France Trance’ sounds like it has used references from Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ sung in a faux French sounding language to a louche burlesque soundtrack and featuring some very nice clarinet work. Sounds mad but it works!

Luckily the music seldom strays too far into the bizarre dream-world in which this couple exist and overall the album makes an unusual but pleasing journey around their kitchen of world flavours. - State / Phil Bergan