Search - Brass Monkey :: The Complete Brass Monkey

Not the complete Brass Monkey

Laurence Browne | Brisbane, Australia | 06/02/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This double album - fortunately with the release of Sound and Rumour not the complete Brass Monkey - is if nothing else great value for money: two excellent albums for the price of one. See How It Runs has been one of my favorite albums for years, and it was a great pleasure to be able to buy it alongside their first album which I had never heard and had been on the prowl for for some time.Brass Monkey have without question one of the best lineups in contemporary English folk, with Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick both polished and formidable performers in their own right. Add to this a terrific brass section and some of the finest folk percussion you could want to hear. The latter is particularly noticable on what was side 1 of See How it Runs: Da Floo'er O'Taft followed by Weaver and the Factory Maid and then Rose Lawn Quadrille have often driven me to gyrate rather intensely, much to the consternation of my wife!Indeed, many of the tracks on both albums have a driving rhythm which compare favourably with their brass counterparts from Cuba, despite the obviously enormous genre differences. But this is not to underestimate the slower and more plaintive tracks, particularly John Kirkpatrick's rendering of Willie the Waterboy and Riding Down to Portsmouth, both of which contain tremendous expressions of bittersweet feeling which are greatly augmented by trumpet and trombone. What a wonderful backdrop brass makes to good old English folk songs! And then there is the interplay between brass and concertina, the sounds from each somehow displaying a subtle and resonant similarity. Add to that the rhythmn, great vocals and choices of song from both Carthy and Kirkpatrick and you have what really ought to be one of Amazon.com's top sellers, certainly in the folk category."