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Written in Folk Roots issue 81, 1990


VASMALOM
Vasmalom
Vasmalom BPO95 (1989)

ZSARÁTNOK
Holdudvar/Paraselene
Hungaroton SLPX 18155 (1989)

Vasmalom have done a couple of WOMADs, and by the time you read this will have finished their short December visit to Britain. This, their first album, is apparently the first Hungarian release independent of the state record label, though made on Hungaroton's presses. It's full of beautiful tunes, wild and innovative instrumental textures of fiddle, double bass, bagpipe, darabuka, and, most notably, big flutes working in third and higher registers, where the shrieking, slithering harmonies get so close together that whole tunes can be played up there without much need for finger-holes. The singing of Eva Molnar, though different in approach, has to it the same aura of authoritative calm which Marta Sebestyén projects, a sort of sphere of silence around the voice.

      If Vasmalom show what can be done in the continuing Hungarian tradition, Zsarátnok's second album opens up a sort of northern Islamic route, from the muezzin in Kuwait whose call to prayer opens the first track, through the Balkans to Scandinavian fiddle and nyckelharpa music, picking up the western classical tradition, jazz-rock, cocktail jazz and much more along the way. The thing is, as each style is picked up it's brilliantly played, with powerful tunes - no new age superficial eclecticism this. One of the most dazzling and satisfying albums I've heard for years.

 
© 1990 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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