- various artists: country & eastern christmas
(2008, 2cd, sweden, country & eastern ce12)
Last Wednesday, the weather report made me a bit nervous. Western Europe was going to get a lot of snow. More specific, it said that Belgium would be good for 15 cm of snow. And this would be happening during the weekend. This meant that I had to change my plans as I would have liked to drive to the Pieter Claus concert in Deinze on Sunday morning...
So this morning, I got up, took a look at the snowflakes outside, and went for the "Country & Eastern Christmas" album.
Swedish drummer Bengt Berger's Country & Eastern label released this record a bit over a year ago, right in time for Christmas 2008.
The "Country & Eastern Christmas" double album includes 26 traditionals (some of which are Christmas classics) that all got a C&E treatment.
Almost every song on this record has a different (and impressive) vocalist, backed by the so-called 'party band'. This party-band consists of Lars Almqvist (trumpet), Bengt Berger (drums), Jonas Knutsson (saxes), Kjell Westling (woodwinds) and Mats Öberg (!!) (keyboards & harmonica).
At first I thought that 'party band' was a rather strange name for a backing band, but the first track (an instrumental potpourri of various christmas tunes) soon proved me wrong. This is fun. Big fun. This party band knows how to throw... Well, you know what I mean.
There's some real gems on these discs. I really like 'Det Är En Ros Utsprungen' (with Sofia Berg-Böhm on vocals), or 'Nisse-Polkka' that features Mirja Mäkelä, or 'Father X-Mas Has A Master Plan', another party band instrumental, and these are just te first tunes of disc one.
"Country & Eastern Christmas" is a great record. It's a fine mixture of jazz and contemporary folk music.
Recommended !
The funniest thing is that this recording was made in May.
It makes me wonder if someone brought a Santa Hat...
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