Piers Faccini‘s Beating Drum label continue their limited edition 12” vinyl series HEAR MY VOICE, a collection of recordings that aims to champion some of today’s exciting new voices. We covered the first release of Gnut which is now followed by the remarkable voice of Tui Mamaki whose video for Follow you can watch above.
Tui Mamaki can thank her adventurous troubadour family for giving her a taste for sounds from far-away places. Born and raised in New Zealand, she ended up more recently, living and studying music in Bulgaria, having fallen in love as a young child with their traditional folk singing. Her four beautiful songs for the ep combine the odd meters and musical styles of traditional Bulgarian music with the English of her native New Zealand.
Hers is a unique form of songwriting in today’s folk canon given the eclectic assemblage of influences she manages to combine in her songs, on paper it shouldn’t work but with her haunting voice coupled with Faccini’s production, the odd meters and eclectic arrangements perfectly add up. The four songs shimmer with unusual instrumentation, there are the pulsing Moroccan guembris and mandoles played by Algerian Malik Ziad, minimalist percussion in the form of a Persian Zarb played by Australian Tunji Beier while delicate tapestries of slide guitars, dulcimers and harmoniums by Piers Faccini flow in out of Mamaki’s confessional lyrics and haunting voice.
With Hear My Voice, Beating Drum, aims to give a platform to a select group of new and exciting artists the label encounters, carrying the torch for an eclectic and innovative 21st century form of world folk songwriting.
Beating Drum is known for releasing Piers Faccini’s solo albums as well his frequent side projects like his duo with the American singer Dawn Landes but the label has also put out solo albums and eps by two contemporary female voices, the Swedish singer-songwriter Jenny Lysander as well as the French-Algerian project Yelli Yelli.
Hear My Voice #2 is out now: http://smarturl.it/HearMyVoice2
More here: http://www.beatingdrumrecords.com/