La Boum! - Marionette

(May 2005) 10 tracks: Marionette * Shopping * Devil * Home * Power * Believe * This Land * Falling * The Sound of Leaving * Bamako.

With their new album Marionette, La Boum! is once again at the forefront of the boundary-crossing genre of World Roots music.

The group's frontman, Tom Salter, worked in Mali with Ali Farka Touré in the late 1980s and subsequently performed with Ali at WOMAD in the UK. Marionette has echoes of this work but continues to cross musical frontiers to include the folk, Latin and jazz influences of Scottish band members - Mary MacMaster of the Poozies (vocals, harp), Ben Ivitsky of the Eliza Carthy Band (guitar), Heather MacLeod (vocals) and Dougie Hudson of Salsa Celtica (percussion).

The horn and vocal sections give the band a big sound, boosted by guests from the Indian band Mrigiya, Sharat Chandra Srivastava (violin) and Athar Hussein (tablas), Peatbog Faeries' Iain Copeland (percussion) and the voice of Eliza Carthy.

"The steamiest band North of the rainforest." (The List)

"Zimbabwean guitar pop, reggae rhythms, deep acoustic West African grooves, intriguing lyrics... backing singers who sound like Bob Marley's I Threes and a booting horn section. Who the hell are these people?" (Froots)

"I think we’ve managed to integrate what I love in Africa with what I love in cosmopolitan Scotland." (Tom Salter)