duggup

Atmospheric musical arrangements in a style most classical and stylish; that’s how Ulytau initially struck me. There is more here than first meets the eye. They are a wonderfully eclectic mix of metal, classical meets traditional tunes.
Yep, they are a little flamboyant but they are not without substance. This trio from Kazakhstan in Central [...]

Beirut were on the ABC Arts show last Sunday, they an instrumental piece and I thought they were amazing, a mariachi band playing Turkish folk tunes (there was a lot of brass in the mix), I then strolled over to www.myspace.com/beruit and was delighted to find that as well as a ten piece band they [...]

Enka is a style of Japanese pop music very popular around the time of the 2nd World War. It is generally performed by women wearing kimonos singing tragic and bittersweet torch songs to suitably overblown orchestral arrangements. China and Korea share a similar style of music.
Here is some footage from Japanese TV where Jero sang [...]

Yeasayer are a band from New York who describes its sound as “Middle Eastern – Psych – Pop – Snap – Gospel”. Hmm… I don’t know about that but I have been listening to their track “2080” and it’s fabulous.
I can hear a cross road meeting between Johnny Clegg with Hilton Rosenthal and [...]

Solas are another Celtic-music quintet that are helping keep the “tradition” alive. They fired up around 1994 and released their debut CD about two years later.Like all bands, over the years members have left and been replaced, helping to extend and refine their music
Today Solas is anchored by founders Seamus Egan, who plays [...]

In the middle of January this year, Jon Pareles of the New York Times wrote a review of Globalfest 2008 and in it he mentioned a band called Toumast
Here is some of what he wrote…
Finally, there was Toumast, led by a Touareg guitarist from Niger, Moussa Ag Keyna, who came to Paris [...]

Blue King Brown are truly amazing. Their track “Water” has enough life and energy to solve Global Warming. This was the track they played at the Australia Day concert in Canberra and were far and away the best thing on the bill. I was truly blown away by the power and passion that these guys [...]