Groundbreaking British collective Transglobal Underground has announced the release of its new album, “A Gathering of Strangers 2021.”
The album is now ready and will be released on CD and download in February. However, anyone joining the Transglobal Underground Bandcamp subscription can get it right now, along with 5 extra tracks. Additionally, anyone joining the second tier will get the CD itself and yet more mixes. “It’s just the first of 12 releases coming out on the subscription this year,” says the band.
A little over 10 years ago, Hamid Mantu and Tim Whelan of Transglobal Underground traveled across Europe in search of songs, collaborators and a vision. The search took them through time and place, through a library celebrating the multi-cultural past of Hungary, record stores keeping the last of the rebel spirit of old Prague alive, a studio built in the building of the Bulgarian Communist radio services, bars in Paris, and cafes in Copenhagen.
The vision was to find songs of emigration and immigration across and inside the continent. The intention was to learn what these songs could tell us today about immigration, emigration and those shifting, never fully defined, continental frontiers in the present and future. A look at Europe’s uncertain past as it moved towards an uncertain future.
Various artists crossed those frontiers: London based Bulgarian vocalist Eugenia Georgieva, leader of the Perunika Trio; English folk singer Jim Moray and Irish singer and composer Martin Furey, both inhabiting the spaces between tradition and experimentation. And from Hungary, producer and programmer Lepes Gabor and traditional vocalist Nori Kóvács.
The album includes two special guest performances: Stuart Staples of Tindersticks as the timber-rich voice of a lost English coal miner and Yanka Rupkina, the leader of the original Trio Bulgarka, gave a rich and tragic performance of an emigrant worker losing her family. And a regular Transglobal Underground collaborator, Czech/Senegalese DJ Bourama Badji, takes an Irish traditional song into a new dimension.
The band adds: “In 2021, the uncertain future has arrived and we present this re-imagined final version as a tribute from all who had to cross borders in the past to all who keep crossing them today.”
Director Ian Knox has made 3 films inspired by the music from the album. Here’s the first: ‘Lisbon’ featuring Jim Moray (UK) and Nóri Kovács (Hungary).
Author: World Music Central News Room
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