The record that the Taliban wanted to ban? In a way, yes, which is one good reason that Khaled Arman and his extraordinary Ensemble Kaboul are based in Geneva. From there they recreate the vibrant and witty songs and tunes of their homeland. To be accurate, Arman, a virtuoso rubab (lute) player, has had considerable contact with Europe: educated partially in France, he has won classical guitar prizes as well as having worked in electroacoustic composition. This versatility is reflected in Nastaran's sly experimentalism: Arman increases his rubab's range by reinventing its neck with extra frets, while Paul Grant, the only non-Afghan member of the Ensemble, brings santoor to the mix. It's the first time in 40 years that the zither-like instrument has featured in Afghan music.

There's a wonderfully robust quality about Nastaran: the flashing percussion of instrumentals like 'Mahali' or the shimmering drones of 'Sindhi Bharavi'. Much is dance music in the oldest sense, as motifs from a wide range of ethnic groups are blended and extemporized. There's even a last performance from Ustad Malang Nedjirabi, in the form of an inspired, intoxicating zirbaghali drum solo. But the Ensemble really shine in their love songs, and vocalists Hossein Arman and Taher Hakami invoke a quality of yearning that's not altogether of the spiritual type. You can literally hear the life-enhancing defiance.

Rating     
www.accords-croises.com

Au Cabaret Sauvage
by Lo'J0
(Emma EM12 CD)

Not so much a band as a tribe. That's the way Lo'Jo - a collective that's included circus performers, poets and filmmakers - see themselves. It's an identification that goes with the love of movement and freedom, musical and otherwise, that bounds through their latest album, Au Cabaret Sauvage.

Don't be alarmed by the 'savagery' the title appears to promise. The Lo'Jo troubadours are interested in the word's association with 'natural' - and are helped along to no small extent by the rough and ready sandpaper tones of vocalist Denis Péan. Combining French chanson permeated by rai, Malian rhythms (the band was instrumental in founding Timbuktu's 'Festival in the Desert') and a flourish of Roma, Au Cabaret Sauvage demonstrates a clear internationalist agenda. 'Mémoire d'homme', for example, could come from a dozen locations. The swooping vocal modulations suggest North Africa, while a violin hints at east European klezmer.

But the album is best at its most frenetic: listen to the kora-driven vivacity of 'Les Humains'. With their travellers' perspectives and rich cluster of languages, Lo'jo give the impression that journeying, figurative and literal, is their ideal state of being.

Rating                   LG
www.lojo.org

Ararat
directed by Atom Egoyan

In this unusual film director Atom Egoyan tells the much-neglected story of the Armenian genocide (1915-17) by paying as much attention to the multi-generational effects of this holocaust as to the event itself. Set in present-day Toronto, the film's conceit is to follow the cast and crew involved in making a movie about the genocide. Moving back and forth between historical events and the lives of the contemporary characters (including Charles Aznavour and Christopher Plummer) the film examines how people make meaning from this catastrophic legacy. Ararat has had a mixed reception - variously described as 'stunning', 'indigestible' and 'a noble disappointment'. But for those who love films which engage the puzzles of both historical memory and dramatic narrative, it is a real treat.

Rating                   MF

Russian Ark
directed by Alexander Sokurov

This is an awesome achievement. The entire film is a roving unbroken 90-minute take of the choreographed movement of thousands of actors around St Petersburg's Hermitage art museum - once the Winter Palace, residence of the tsars. It's the most complex shot in the history of cinema, made possible by high-definition video cameras recording onto a prototype portable hard disk.

But so what? What does the staggering technique contribute to the film? Although the cast is huge, there are only two significant characters - and the camera is one of them. The camera's view is the gaze of a disembodied soul, invisible and inaudible to everyone, and so unable to speak or interact with anyone - apart from the ever present 'Marquis', a cynical 19th-century French diplomat, his (and our) chaperone through time. The soul throughout is an alienated voyeur, his camera eye reducing the action to spectacle.

Sokurov's film ostensibly celebrates high culture and Russia's cultural tradition. We see its patrons - Peter the Great, Catherine ditto, Tsars Nicholas I and II. We see some of the great paintings, hear the music and orchestras they brought to Russia. It's all sophisticated, detached and sometimes rather eerie.

Yet the film is worth staying with - to the haunting finale. After the last great palace ball in 1913, as guests crowd the exits the camera tracks down a cold, dark, draughty side corridor to a window overlooking the river Neva. For the first time there are no people in shot, and - again a first - the camera halts. Nothing, but for the mist rising off the river, moves. A chilling image of intense loneliness, it points up the social void in every scene, the distress and loneliness of being never involved, never acknowledged. Russian Ark is high art pining for community.

Rating                   ML