Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha - Re-covers / CD
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cd cover Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha
Re-covers (Pläne)
$17.99

OK, it had to happen, and Tuvan singer, electric guitarist and experimentalist Kuvezin is certainly the one to do it: Tuvan rooted re-interpreations of 'hits' (although some here fall into the category of minor). So Led Zepellin's "When The Levee Breaks" gets an acid-rock throat-singing treatment to entrancing if somewhat unsettling results side by side with music from Kratfwerk, Motorhead, Hank Williams, Iron Butterfly, Paul Mauriat, Captain Beefheart ("Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles" is one of the gems of the set!), Joy Division and a few Central Asian hit-makers as well. Irresistible fun, and occasioanlly brilliant.

   

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From the pages of fRoots
Oh, deep joy. To see Hank Williams's Ramblin' Man following Kraftwerk's Man Machine and just before Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida; why, this is the stuff of Nick Hornby novels - or is there some more sinister force going on here?

Facts first, conspiracy theories later: what we have here is Albert and the lads putting all sorts of "popular music" to the open-throated and weird stringed and blown Mongolian instrumental sword - other recipients include the Rolling Stones (Play With Fire), Joy Division (Love Will Tear Us Apart), The McPeake Family (Wild Mountain Thyme) and, Lord save us, Santana (Black Magic Woman). The one unifying factor is Albert's gravelly, resonant bass voice; as he chunters and growls his way through the covers one is reminded of nothing so much as a friendly JCB. The aforesaid stringed, blown and hit things sometimes set up a rhythm and sometimes act as dub touches. As for the melodies of the originals, they have little part to play: a trace of one here, a folk memory of another there.

Now this may sound somewhat, um, different, but there is quite a precedent for such ventures - back in the 1970s, the Temple City Kazoo Orchestra's version of Whole Lotta Love was the highlight of their LP; and the godlike Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain are currently achieving superstar staus by deconstructing and reconstructing everything from Dick Barton to Kate Bush and Ms Dynamite. But this album isn't charming or musically quaint - in fact, it's hard work and not a little uncomfortable to sit through. Suggest anything?

Why, of course: the first album by San Francisco weirdies, the Residents. On Third Reich 'n' Roll, they did just the same, turning 60s and 70s "rock classics" into only vaguely recognisable mutations, linked by distorted vocals (only in their case, they needed electronics, while Albert does it all by himself) and making a deeply challenging record in the process. The same is true here; if producer Ben "Til Eulenspiegel" Mandelson doesn't know the Residents' masterpiece, then it's true that great ideas never die. I think it's hilarious, but then I liked the Residents - Ian Kearey, fRoots

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