Namgar

[mdstmprs]

Last weekend I went to the Vancouver Folk Festival and came upon a group more suited for Aural Moon listeners than the local public access folk music programming. Namgar is the name of the lead female vocalist and of the group/collective of musicians that perform with her. They are based in Moscow, but perform music of the Buryat people, whose whole culture is only about 500,000 people, living at the crossroads of Mongolia, China, and Russia. They performed with all indigenous instruments, but later were also comfortable with a couple of DJ's who mix indigenous recordings with modern grooves to create tribal-ish house music. I was impressed. I bought Namgar's more ethnic CD "Hatar" which has a simpler production value, (although recorded well) than their newest release called "Nomad," which still uses their folk instruments, plus drum kit, synths, and higher production values. I discovered their newer sound from their myspace page. In a search for their "Nomad" CD, I found a Russian site where it was downloadalbe as a zip file for free. Now I feel guilty for not paying for it, and would like to absolve myself by buying a copy for Aural Moon. It's available at CD-Baby and other sites. Everyone should go to Namgar's myspace page and listen to Yokhor and Tunka to get an idea of how this mongolian-style music is by its nature, prog rock. This stuff is the REAL Siberian Khatru! One killer tune in 5/4 time, that isn't available for preview on their myspace page is entitled "Whisper Rain." Check it out also, if you can preview it somewhere else. I would love to turn on the Aural Moon community to Namgar, and create some sales for these people's worthy music. How do I go about donating a CD to Aural Moon?