ARTS / Records

NEW RELEASES

Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder: Talking Timbuktu (World Circuit, CD / tape). From Mali to Malibu, the blues is universal. And here, if you need it, is the proof. Toure, the singer and guitarist from West Africa, meets Cooder, the singer and guitarist from southern California, in an experiment that goes right to the source. Both men's rhythm sections alternate in support throughout the 10 tracks, while Cooder leaves the singing to Toure, concentrating on the interweave of stringed instruments. Neither academic nor self-indulgent, the blend is perfect: just enough song-structure, just enough improvisation, just enough room for both men to express themselves and - a rarity nowadays - to provide real-time inspiration for each other in the discovery of music with a special beauty and depth. Richard Williams

Bobby Womack: Midnight Mover (United Artists, CD only). Born in 1944, the sandpaper- throated Womack - Rod Stewart's greatest influence - just missed the first golden age of soul music. His solo career didn't start until 1967, finding its rhythm in the early Seventies, which meant that he always sounded slightly out of stride. This two-CD set collects 44 songs from 1967-76, including such late-blooming classics of handmade soul as 'I Can Understand It', 'Stop on by', 'I'm in Love',

'That's the Way I Feel About Cha' and the sublime 'Harry Hippie'. Less well known is 'Across 110th Street', the theme from a 1973 blaxploitation film which seethes with a particular kind of paranoid exhilaration: true dread, maybe. A first-rate anthology; now maybe somebody will do a similar job on his equally fine post-1976 work. RW

The Very Best of Charly Blues Masterworks (Charly, CD only). Compiled and packaged with due care, priced under pounds 30, this four-CD set starts out as a useful rhythm and blues primer for those who don't already own essentials such as Robert Johnson's 'Up Jumped the Devil', Muddy Waters' 'Got My Mojo Workin' ', Little Walter's 'My Babe', Howlin' Wolf's 'Smokestack Lightnin' ', Elmore James's 'Dust My Broom', John Lee Hooker's 'Dimples' and Jimmy Reed's 'Shame, Shame, Shame'. Then - inevitably, given the material available to the compilers - it goes slack when trying to deal with the events that followed the great years of Chicago R&B. At this stage, for example, Eric Clapton should not be held to account for his immature version of 'Five Long Years', recorded with the Yardbirds at the Marquee in 1964. As long as that lopsidedness is understood, the value isn't bad. RW

Soundgarden: Superunknown (A&M, CD / LP / tape). Of the original Seattle 'Big Three', Soundgarden made the most serious inroads into heavy metal, while Mudhoney embraced slapstick and Nirvana went global. Soundgarden's love of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath was, some said, rooted in dark irony and wry intellect. Now it simply doesn't matter, since this, their third album, is arguably the best heavy-rock record since Physical Graffiti. Epic in every area, apocalyptic in lyrical tone, its 71 minutes take all known metal trademarks and bludgeon them to smithereens. Best of all, they do it with great tunes. David Cavanagh

Gary Peacock / Ralph Towner: Oracle (ECM, CD / tape). Peacock's ability to combine the soulfulness of Charles Mingus with the virtuosity of Scott LaFaro makes him probably the world's most expressive double-bassist. Here his remarkable qualities reinvigorate the playing of Towner, whose mastery of the guitar is equally extraordinary but who can sometimes, in the wrong company, sound merely facile. These intricate acoustic dialogues may be quiet, but they're never less than full-blooded. RW

John Adams: Harmonielehre, etc. CBSO / Simon Rattle (EMI, CD). A minimalist sampler disc of high-gloss, high-energy music by one

of the few composers for whom minimalism isn't a dead end. Two of the best-known Adams scores are included: Short Ride in a Fast

Machine and The Chairman Dances. And the earlier Harmonielehre (less forbidding than the title might suggest) is a vividly imagined piece of musical portraiture: stuck on an E Minor chord for longer than it needs to be but still exhilarating - and played with a convincingly American West Coast panache by Rattle and his Brummie band, whose bounding rhythmic vigour and assertive brass propel the mechanisms of the score with an uplifting sense of forward drive. Michael White

THE IoS PLAYLIST

THE FIVE BEST SOUNDS OF THE MOMENT

Morrissey: Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning (track on Vauxhall and I, Parlophone, CD / LP / tape). The strangest Mozz song ever, all clarinets, muttering and grotesque punchlines. What a career move] DC

Credit to the Nation: Teenage Sensation (One Little Indian, single). Irresistible whistling song from Walsall's young-adult rap superstars. The video is pretty good too. Ben Thompson

Furry Lewis: Fourth & Beale (Verve, CD). Superb grunt'n'slide set from a maverick country- bluesman, recorded live in bed. BT

Nielsen: Symphonies 3 & 4. Gothenburg SO / Neeme Jarvi (DG, CD). Not the most searching of the many versions of these symphonies now on disc - the speeds are glancing - but attractive for a northern, grainy sound you might hear as 'authentic'. MW

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D557, 575, 894. Andras Schiff (Decca, CD). Volume Three of a series played - on a soft-toned Bosendorfer and with all repeats - by one of the finest Schubert pianists around. MW