 The newest album of group "Yat-Kha" ("Poets and Lighthouses", recorded in the fall of 2008 on Jura island in Scotland at the private studio of musician and producer Giles Perring rose to the first place in the charts of World Music Chart Europe of the European association of radio-broadcasts from the original 20th over the past month. Among the new releases in the World Music genre are: SOS Mercedes Leon from Spain and Afrocubism of the group by the same name from Mali.
The album contains songs written by Albert Kuvezin to poems by Japanese poets of the post- WWII period in English translation by Harry and Lynn Guest and Kajima Shozo. The poets are Amano Tadashi, Kamimura Hajime and Yamamoto Taro.
All the songs were composed right on the island Jura after studio work.
The album also includes two songs in Russian (to verses by Kondrat Yemelyanov), one song in Tuvan (by poet and playwright Eduard Mizhit) and one with Kuvezin's own text.
There is also a duet with Scottish bagpipe played by Neil Cameron and two improvisations recorded in a forest accompanied by the sounds of the Scottish nature.
It is difficult to strictly determine the style of the music,: it is a mixture of Japanese philosophy, contemporary Tuvan music and singing, European and American manner of performance, and the influence of Scottish landscapes and the sea.
The songs are remarkable fort he melody of the instrumental passages, where various instruments add to the colorit - clarinet, guitaron, jumbush, baglama, fretless guitar and others. The very feminine, crystal-pure back-vocals of Melanie Pappenheim produce a contrast to Albert's voice.
The main voice and guitar was recorded by Albert himself. Invited famous English and Scottish musicians participated in the recording: bassist Simon Edwards(Fairground Attraction, Talk Talk, Beth Gibbons Billy Bragg, Alain Bashung), multi-instrumentalist Lu Edmonds (The Mekongs, PiL, The Damned, and Yat-Kha), clarinetist Sarah Homer (Sarum Orchestra, Royal Shakespeare Company), the extraordinary singer Melanie Pappenheim (who recorded with Jocelyn Pook and Murray Gold and for such films as:"Eyes Wide Shut", "Gangs of New York" and "Doctor Who"), Neil Cameron - a resident of Jura, maestro of Bagpipe and maker of whisky.
World Music Chart Europe was founded in 1991 by radio-stations of 11 European countries. Every month representatives of 23 leading radio-broadcasting companies of countries of Europe nominate their own favorite 10 best albums in the World Music genre.
Remember that "Yat-Kha is the only group of Russia who was awarded the Grand-Prix in this genre in the prestigious BBC Radio 3 contest.
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