Tartit - "Assinaina". The Tuareg of the Sahara desert play a music that is someone rapping with hard knuckles on your chest. I imagine myself laying on sand and staring at so much sky that I pass out. The Tuareg come: rap rap rap, Assinaina assinaina assinaina. And I come to. I imagine myself drinking water so cool that my belly glows, and I pass out. The Tuareg come: rap rap rap, Assinaina assinaina assinaina. I come to. I imagine myself in a city called Montreal, so familiar in its morning whites and browns, and I think that somehow if I put ear-to-tree I'll hear a music coming up through the roots from a much hotter place - something to help me come to.

This is a band of five women and four men, drums and handclaps that go in circles, voices chiming and cresting. To me it recalls the intricate jubilance of Toumani Diabate. Crammed tells me Tuareg men are veiled, women are not. And I tell you: this music, a song called "Assinaina", is absolutely unveiled.

[buy]

Mirah - "Apples in the Trees (Pash remix)". One of the rare highlights in a new album of Mirah remixes, Pash's version strips the song to just two lines - then sets these spinning like plates on sticks. Bells ring and ding, bluebells rattle, apple blossoms fall to earth like brass ball bearings. Mirah doesn't sound like the boxing clever folkie that she is: she sounds like someone already forgotten. You know when you think of a song, or a lyric, that someone sang long ago at a concert? And you don't even remember what the band looked like, let alone who they were? All you have left from that performance is the curl of Mostly-Forgotten? Well this is that, in a broken music-box.

[buy Joyride (or, better yet, buy Mirah's very best records)]