Friday Music 04-01-08

Christmas is all over, the beef is all finished and here we are with this year's first music 'review' on Skip The Budgie! Of course I have also spent the time decorating, a little bit of socialising, a lot of Life On Mars and far too much time has been spent messing around with Mediamonkey, organising my music collection...

Various Artists - Music of the World: Nomad Christmas: A World Music Celebration

I remembered that I had this just in the nick of time, feeling the need for seasonal music, but demanding taste and decorum... There are some great versions of popular carols played on a variety of ethnic instruments, and some terrible horrors - Silent Night just doesn't ever work outside of a cathedral guys, really. Just stop.

Mokobe: Mon Afrique

This album is great, it's French/African hip hop and should be cliched and boring because of the common obsession with feeling your cultural roots in Africa even though you haven't lived there ever - and full of stars of African music, like Salif Keita, Youssou N'dour, Seun Kuti (Fela's 'other' son). Still in this case it all fits together really well and is a new favourite.

Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials

It's not really music, but while painting and such I have been listening to the BBC's versions of His Dark Materials, am currently on the second book, The Subtle Knife and it's a really good version, a bit unusual in that they have a full cast for the characters and Philip Pullman himself reading all the bits in-between. It's pretty addictive, the story is exciting, scientifically interesting, controversial and confusing - all good traits for this sort of book - and will probably get in the way of my music listening - for a few days at least!