Soundwalk Collective release its second album, Mummer Love, which features contributions from Patti Smith, Phillip Glass, Mulatu Astatke and the Sufi Group of Sheikh Ibrahim...

The inspiration of, Soundwalk Collective's new album is the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). More specifically, his time in Africa, when he travelled to Ethiopia - where the principal practice was Sufism; a mystical form of Islam that focuses on the renunciation of worldly things and the purification of the soul.

Sounds an interesting project, yet somehow it manages to be presented in the worst form of hippy nonsense I've heard in quite some time (backed with the chants of African singers). Jungle sounds, scratches and drumming... it almost felt like a cliched western interpretation of African culture at its most basic.

The lyrics on the whole are nothing short of self indulgent claptrap. So, if you love cliched sounds of other cultures, funneled through the eyes and ears of westerners, with some pretty ropey poetry... fill your boots!

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Nick Smithson