Where Young Grass Grows

Album review

The members of Huun-Huur-Tu continue to amaze with their acrobatic throat singing and the eerie, haunted overtones it produces. While this continues to be their trademark sound, it's easy to overlook the fact that they're also excellent instrumentalists and composers who have moved well beyond the traditional music of the region to create their own songs -- not all of which involve throat singing. At the core of it, as with all Tuvan music, is the irresistible rhythm of the hoof beat, since the culture of the horse is so greatly ingrained in the national psyche, where horses are currency, transportation -- everything. On this album they forge a Scottish connection through the addition of harpist Mary MacMaster and young and adventurous piper Martyn Bennett; the combination of musics might initially seem unlikely, but it works. Bennett is especially fine, skillfully integrating his small pipes into tracks like "Ezir-Kara" and making them sound as exotic and unearthly as the igil. The brief live recordings of bandmembers throat singing while on horseback on the steppes are the essence of Huun-Huur-Tu, however, doing what their people have done for centuries; they capture the sound of history, while the new material brings it into the present.
© Chris Nickson /TiVo