Public Image Ltd

Record Review: “Lost in Tajikistan” by Mekon’s Lu Edmonds

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Mekons’ Sally Tims with Lu Edmonds. Edmonds describes his new recording as “just a tiny slice of the mountain music of Tajikistan

A glimpse of Tajikistan’s roots musical traditions and the new music Tajik musicians are developing .

By Andrew Cronshaw

Tajikistan bordering on Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and China, is a mountainous country with a population of about ten million, the great majority of whom are Tajik. It became independent in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. This album is what British musician Lu Edmonds describes as “just a tiny slice of the mountain music of Tajikistan, whose rich traditions have soaked up the traffic of the Silk Roads and beyond for thousands of years.”

Lu Edmonds, a member of Public Image Ltd and at various times of 3 Mustaphas 3, The Mekons, Billy Bragg’s Blokes, Les Triaboliques and many more bands stretching back to and through punk times, didn’t so much get lost in Tajikistan as sucked in. At first, in 2004, it was as an interpreter for a biodiversity project. (He speaks Russian which, while Tajiks generally speak Tajik, is used as an inter-ethnic means of communication). But he got more involved, meeting and helping musicians create performances (which have now grown to include the annual Roof Of The World festival in the high Pamirs), get their instruments repaired with the help of London luthier Andrew Scrimshaw, and also surreptitiously digitising a mass of recordings of musical material from the old Soviet archives in the country’s capital of Dushanbe.

The recordings on this album aren’t from archives, though. They’re from 2008 when, with the help of Taneli Bruun of Helsinki’s Global Music Centre, Edmonds and key Dushanbe musician Iqbal Zavkibekov, put together a 16-track recording setup in Dushanbe’s Gurminj Museum of Musical Instruments, founded by Zavkibekov’s musician and film-star father Gurminj. We’re not talking Abbey Road here. It was -20°C outside, and although the museum was heated, much of the warmth came from the musicians who packed in to grasp an opportunity to record. It’s only now that those recordings have been cherry-picked and mixed (in London by Leo Abrahams) to make the album.

 

The first five tracks are by the group Mizrob, featuring Iqbal Zavkibekov on setor (Tajik long-necked steel-strung lute) and guitar, singer Davlat Nasri, who also plays harmonium and dotar (another long-necked lute), and percussionist Zarif Pulodov. In melodic form and sound it could broadly be described as having a middle-eastern feel, with a modal melody over drone and rippling darabukka or tabla-type percussion, but while a root drone is implied there are also harmonising lines. The first two tracks are instrumental; in the third enter Nasri’s vocals, perhaps comparable to some of the melismatic declamatory singing of the Indian sub-continent, while “Hurshedam,” with its winding harmonium melody line under Nasri’s singing, is in a flamenco-like mode. (I’m making these observations as description, not analysis). Continue reading →

‘I won’t let the bastards grind me down’: John Lydon on grief, feuds and being an unlikely optimist

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Covid, court, bereavement: although the PiL man’s new album could not have been made against a worse backdrop, his glass of non-alcoholic cider remains half full

By Lee Campbell

There’s a term for people that live in Malibu – they’re called Malubians,” claims a cackling John Lydon. “It sounds like something that has to be cut off at an early age.” The artist formerly known, in his Sex Pistols days, as Johnny Rotten is speaking from his California home and seems ecstatic that we can hear and see each other on our Zoom call. “I am so fucked up with technology,” he laughs. “I’m as blind as a bat.”

Lydon, 67, is looking well, though, decked out in green specs and matching pullover, with his signature vertiginous hair teased into a quiff. The well-worn jumper was a gift from a fan “in either Bradford, Barnsley or Bolton; one of them”, who asked for it to be passed on to his late wife, Nora Forster. “It was very sweet. She can’t wear it now, so I wear it. It’s not about the monetary value, it’s the thought – that’s priceless.” His love for his fanbase feels completely genuine. On the wall behind him are a Samurai sword and an Afghan dagger given to him by diehards when his band Public Image Ltd (PiL) played behind the iron curtain decades ago.

Next month, PiL will release End of World, their first album in eight years. The promotion for it, along with preparation for an accompanying tour this autumn, has come in the midst of profound grief for Lydon after the death in April of Forster, his wife of 44 years. “It hurts so deeply,” he says. “It’s hard to get to grips with but I don’t want to let her down. That’s not healthy for me, or her, or her memories. So, I am gonna try and throw myself into working – as far as I could throw myself, considering my weight,” he adds with a laugh.“It’s an uphill climb, but I’ve got to get there. I’ve got to find myself again, because in all of this you can’t end up losing yourself.”

John Lydon
John Lydon … ‘You never get a chance to sort yourself out before some new inflammation turns up, like a boil on the bum!’
Photograph: Dylan Coulter/The Guardian

Sadly, some online trolls, described by Lydon as “savage kittens”, have mocked his suffering. He cites one particular comment along the lines of, “Well, that’s what you get for marrying an older woman.” But this low form of viciousness just seems to bounce off him. “Funnily enough, whatever they meant by that, I found it heartwarming. That’s my nature, to make the best of a thing, not the worst.”

As much as he may be a glass-half-full type, Lydon has never been afraid of being candid about his shortcomings. Take his account of his recent struggles with alcohol. “I went through a rough time and gained some weight,” he says while nursing an alcohol-free cider. “Don’t look for clarification in claret. There isn’t any.” Continue reading →

30 Years Ago: Public Image Ltd. Find Stability on ‘Happy?’

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In the mid-’80s, John Lydon was a man without a band. He still carried the moniker of Public Image Ltd. – the group he had formed once the Sex Pistols imploded – but had ditched all of the band’s other members due to control issues and drug addiction. After making 1986’s Album, a solo album in all but name, Lydon started to assemble a new band to fly the PiL flag [ . . . ] More: 30 Years Ago: Public Image Ltd. Find Stability on ‘Happy?’