Real World

Give your turntable something to smile about. The Portico Quartet's fabulous - "A Second Mercury Nomination Shouldn't Be Out of the Question" BBC - album 'Isla' is now available on the beautiful medium that is vinyl.

Take a look at this recording of 'All You Need is Love' by Bandaged Together - a collection of the great and the good in the music industry, radio and TV - in aid of this years BBC Children in Need appeal.

Peter Gabriel can be seen at the top and tail of the track.

Syriana, November's release at the B&W Society of Sound has three distinctive artists at its core: Abdullah Chhadeh, Syrian qanun virtuoso and musical innovator whose album Seven Gates was lauded for its beauty and originality. Irish-born double bassist Bernard O'Neill, erstwhile member of Chhadeh's ensemble Nara, a frequent Real World collaborator and a musician in constant demand. Nick 'Dubulah' Page, the half Greek, half English guitarist of Transglobal Underground and Temple of Sound fame and the visionary behind the phenomenal Real World collective Dub Colossus.

Friends for years, the trio came together in creative protest pre-President Obama. "We thought a new Cold War was being foisted upon the world," says Page wryly. "The Cold War and its iconography had divided East and West. We wanted to bridge it."

With the qanun representing Eastern classical traditions and the guitar coming in from the West, O'Neill's double bass became a sort Galatian bridge straddling two continents. Accordionists, percussionists, string players and guest vocalists from Damascus add an extra dimension.

Fresh from enthusiastic reception at BBC radio 1, Portico Quartet's glorious 'Line' with its journey from shimmering hypnotic hang to unfolding saxaphone melody has been revisited, reinvented and remixed by Sbtrkt.

Sbtrkt is the elusive London based producer making some of the freshest beats around.. He's got the airwaves in a stir with Benji B, Mary Anne Hobbs, Annie Mac, mistjam and Gilles Peterson singing his praises. Recently SBTRKT has wrapped up remixes for Basement Jaxx, Jack Penate, Frans Ferdinand and Fantastic Mr Fox. With solo releases forthcoming on the Young Turks and Ramp Recordings stables. One of the hot new producers to watch on the dubstep and underground dance scene.

At the 2004 WOMAD Rivermead festival, Duncan Bellamy and Nick Mulvey came across a Hang, a small Swiss pan drum like a flying saucer. They built a sound-world around the instrument, adding double bass, drums and saxophone with Milo Fitzpatrick and Jack Wylie to form Portico Quartet and produce a Mercury nominated album.

Their second album 'Isla' on Peter Gabriel's Real World Records builds on this sound.

"With 'Isla', produced by John Leckie, Portico have found their mojo: a thrumming, intensely textured and dynamic sound flowing between sax, bass, drums and hang. (Looks like a wok, sounds like a steel drum.) The subtle electronic shadowing and beefed-up bass recall EST, while the lead track traces a Balkan/Gypsy line and repetitious rhythmic measures reference Reichian minimalism without making you feel ill. All tracks are memorable and hang together like a suite. Brilliant."

The Independent on Sunday (UK)

John Leckie talks about the recording of the Portico Quartet record 'Isla' at Abbey Road Studios, working with the band, and mixing the record in The Big Room at Real World Studios.

Leckie's track record as a catalyst for emerging talent is legendary: not only for the famous examples, Stone Roses, Doves, XTC, Radiohead, but also for pioneering systems orchestra Lost Jockey (which spawned Man Jumping, ZTT's Andrew Poppy, Orlando Gough, and soundtrack supremo John Lunn) and World Music stars such as Rodrigo & Gabriela and Papa Wemba.

Early bird tickets to WOMAD New Zealand on the 12th-14th March 2010 are on sale now through Ticketek.

Limited supplies of discounted (early bird) tickets went on sale today at 9am and you have one week to get your hands on them before we throw the offer wide open. Early bird tickets save you $32 off an adult three-day ticket and $25 off youth three-day tickets!

Early bird tickets are limited and extras will not be released.

Herding cats and Lighthouse Keepers' parties all get a mention. Peter's back on your screens this October with the news that whilst there has been a brief outage here, others have been hard at work- it seems some satirical fun is being poked at the Moon Club.

Other news includes a look back at WOMAD Charlton Park, where Peter aired material from the forthcoming 'Scratch My Back' project in public for the first time. There's more on that project and other new music from Speed Caravan, Portico Quartet and David Rhodes amongst others. Recollections from the amazing Polar Music Prize award ceremony where Peter was presented with his award by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden for 'groundbreaking, outward - looking and boundary-busting artistry'. This years other award winner, the Venezuelan conductor, composer and economist José Antonio Abreu is also discussed along with a new campaign to improve the rights of musicians - The Featured Artists Coalition.

Today 'Kalashnik Love' by Speed Caravan is released in the UK on Real World Records. The album is available to purchase from our store.

"Electrified, amplified and fuelled by creative fire, the Paris-based quartet charge towards a psychedelic horizon; slaloming through rock, dance, electro, hiphop, world and other music - blazing a trail with raised fists, a hand brake turn and a sharp spray of desert sand...Mehdi Haddab is a virtuoso of the classical oud, that fretless Arabic lute beloved of Middle Eastern orchestras and an instrument with a history stretching back over 5,000 years...Speed Caravan's debut album Kalashnik Love combines tradition and future, ancient and urban, beauty and fury to stun-gunning effect. Laden with special guests and throbbing with raw rock energy it references everyone from The Cure and The Chemical Brothers to Algerian rai and other Arabic influences. The sublime result of several year's worth of incendiary live touring, it is fusion - but not (hurrah!) as we know it."