PANCORDIA - the two-fisted accordion weblog
Global Accordion: Early Recordings

Global Accordion: Early Recordings (1927-1948) is a recent CD on the German Wergo label, compiling accordion recordings from old 78s. As you might suspect, the material derives from around the world. The sound quality is good, though sometimes it feels a little too tweaked for my taste -- a couple of tracks have some artificial stereo imaging happening and some other tracks seem to have a posh digital reverb ladled on top. A couple of my favorites are two French tracks in the early, rural Auvergne style. Wonderfully raw and exotic sounding stuff. The booklet features the expected essays (in German and English) and a lot of interesting old photos. For a link with an English-speaking destination, here's a review of the disc at the Musical Traditions website. Most of the usual web retailers seem to have it available.

Posted by M.Ace at 09:03 PM, November 29, 2002