No’am Newman wrote this review which ran on Folk Tales.
FLK is not an abbreviation of folk, but rather an acronym for Furlan Liberation Kongress. They are a six piece group hailing from the Friuli region in north east Italy (very near the Yugoslavian border, for those who are interested in a geography lesson), who sing in their local dialect. As the Compagnia Nuove Indye Web site explains, “For a thousand years the people of our region have been speaking this language and there is therefore no need to justify this choice. We don’t sing in dialect because we don’t want to be understood, we do it because we are different. Because everyone is different from everyone else. We could sing in another language but we wouldn’t be the same people, we would be singing other people’s words.”
As the songs are sung in the local dialect (although the cd booklet does give the words in both dialect and Italian, neither are languages that I speak or understand), they are incomprehensible to me, thus making listening to the disk solely a musical experience. Apparently the “band sing passionately of problems of minority groups, of the problems of nearby ex-Yugoslavia”; I can confirm that they sing passionately, as the songs tend to the dramatic.
The songs don’t seem to have strong melodies, nor do they have even mildly complex harmonic structures; the interest comes from the third side of the musical triangle: rhythm. Although many of their songs are in common time, there is one song in 7/8 time, and one which sounds suspiciously like 11/8 (I’m not sure as I couldn’t count fast enough and I only have ten fingers); these rhythms — exotic to our Western ears — add a sense of drama to their music.
Instrument-wise, they are conventional in their use of acoustic guitar, bass, drums, percussion, piano and accordion (listening through headphones, I also detect the tasteful use of synthesizers). At times, they produce a sound reminiscent of Eliza Carthy’s Red, which should give some point of reference. That disk also used accordion and acoustic guitar along with unusual drumming, producing a new and compelling version of English folk music, and here presumably FLK are doing the same thing for their local equivalent. Whenever I become too accustomed to the music, Cristina Mauro begins singing, and her expressive voice along with her unusual phrasing (mainly a result of the unfamiliar language) remind me to whom I am listening.
All of the songs on this disk (bar a few lyrics and one tune) were written by Alessandro Montello, who plays keyboards, accordion and sings; he is joined by (presumably) his brother Stefano, who plays acoustic guitar and also sings. Lead vocals are mainly taken by Cristina Mauro; completing the line-up are Flavio Zanier (bass, viola, vocals), Michele Carrara (drums) and Loris Luise (percussion, vocals). The playing is exemplary, and the arrangements, while not complex in the musical sense, make the songs come alive. The sound, as one would expect in this digital age, is crystal clear.
I would like to thank Emma Lakin at CNI Records (Italy) for providing me with the web address. I somehow doubt that this record will be easily available in your local record shop, so if you are interested in a copy, I advise that you write to her at emma.cni@tiscalinet.it.
Judging by what is written on their web site, I imagine that FLK are not interested in an international career. If they were, I would be forced to recommend that they learn to sing in English, as the tunes and singing are just too weird for the English-speaking market. The music, though, is fine and is well-worth listening to.
(CNI, 1999)
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