David Pratt

Gabriel Moreno’s ‘Wound in The Night’ is an absorbing and engaging listen. At times on this album, he is the ideal person to fill the void left by Leonard Cohen.

Iona Lane & Ranjana Ghatak’s ‘Cove’ is a beguiling and transfixing EP providing a memorable listening experience. The juxtaposition of two beautiful voices from such diverse musical backgrounds is a thing of great beauty.

The Eliza Carthy Trio’s ‘Conversations We’ve Had Before’, on which David Delarre and Saul Rose join Eliza, is “one of the best traditional folk releases of the year so far.” A digital-only release, it is to be hoped that such an enigmatic and compelling album receives the attention that it deserves.

Another one to savour. Pedro Rosa’s ‘Midnight Alvorada’ is an impressive debut which could play a valuable role in bringing this type of Brazilian music to a wider audience. Its mellow, mellifluous ambience provides the perfect, chilled sound for a balmy summer.

The canon of African electronic music is significantly enhanced by the release of ‘Synthesized Sudan’, the first ever release of electronic Jaglara, an obscure dance music from an area near the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea border. Full marks to Ostinato Records for bringing such joyful, uplifting new dance music to our ears.

With Family Affair, Inna de Yard authentically and innovatively present some of the genre’s most memorable songs and artists. A highly recommended accompaniment to the summer and beyond.

With Spirits, The Circling Sun have managed to produce an album which succeeds in paying due respect to the African American greats of jazz whilst simultaneously imbuing their compositions with a passionate South Pacific empathy and insight.

Merry Hell are a seriously entertaining group, with songs that can strike a chord, uplift and engender feelings of well-being. Let The Music Speak For Itself is a retrospective collection that does so much more than merely ‘speak’; it positively roars.

Ernest Bergez transforms Sourdure into the four-piece Sourdurent with the release of L’herbe de détourne – a bold and deeply rewarding venture.

This May, Merry Hell will mark their 12 years with a double CD retrospective collection, ‘Let The Music Speak For Itself’; we chat with Wigan’s finest, who tell us, “We make a song and dance about serious subjects, but we’re seriously entertaining.“

Another fine offering from Bongo Joe Records – Amazigh Freedom Rock 1973-1983, is a significant release, bringing the joyous and vibrant fusion of Les Abranis’ “rockabyle”, to a wider audience.

At the forefront of both tropical and early psychedelic, electronic/synthesised music, with Ecuatoriana, Analog Africa transports the listener to a parallel universe where Polibio Mayorga is confirmed as a legendary icon of Ecuadorian music.

Yalla Miku is an exhilarating debut that reaches beyond the norm with its vitality and passion. The Geneva-based group have produced an album that is truly ‘Musique Sans Frontières’.

With ‘I Saw A Star…’, Bennet Wilson Poole have produced an album that is as exhilaratingly brilliant and accomplished as their debut. It is as prime an example of high-class, polished, rewarding and entertaining music that you are likely to hear.

As Ireke, Julien Gervaix and Damien Tesson visit new sonic territories on Tropikadelic; you will probably not hear a better debut album this year – a joyous fusion of highlife, funk, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and electro.

No Food Without Taste If By Hunger, with its hypnotic, bouncy basslines, sixties-style trippy, psychedelic guitars, seductive and oft electrifying keyboards, compelling highlife horns and raw, primal trance-like grooves makes for an irresistibly infectious album. Intoxicating funk music at its very best.

Alice’s ‘L’Oiseau Magnifique’ is a beguiling album of musical collages, replete with eccentric wit and crystalline vocals and harmonies; if you expect the unexpected, you will not be disappointed.

‘Dindin’ is an optimistic album, one on which Kimi Djabaté pays homage to his griot heritage while also artistically expressing the complexity of contemporary life in Africa, both the joys and obstacles.