Album: Yat-Kha, ****

Tuva.Rock, Yat-Kha Recordings

If anywhere truly is the back of beyond, it's Tuva, a place that's difficult to get to even from such easy-to-reach neighbours as Siberia and Outer Mongolia. Almost entirely surrounded by mountains, it's an isolated Shangri-La which, though despoiled by successive blights of communism and post-glasnost capitalism, proclaims its uniqueness through the phenomenon of Tuvan throat-singing, the extraordinary process by which one mouth produces two entirely separate notes simultaneously. This sound is usually heard only on world-music releases by folkloric combos such as Huun-Huur-Tu, in songs celebrating traditional equestrian skills and the like. Now the former Huun-Huur-Tu singer Albert Kuvezin has indulged his once forbidden love of Western rock music in the trio Yat-Kha, blending native instruments, such as the bowed-string igil and morinhuur, with chugging rock guitars and bustling percussion, over which his laryngitic sub-bass growl uncoils sinuously. The resulting folk-rock drone resembles Fairport Convention, particularly on traditional songs such as "Dorug Daiym", whose accelerating tempo brings to mind Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick's dervish duels. Infectious reggae offbeats propel "Khandagaity" and "The Steppe, The City, The Sea", while Kuvezin croaks like Tom Waits on "Voyager", one of several original songs reflecting the Tuvan preoccupation with place. Chief among these is the title track, a miasmic manifesto: "From Tuva Moscow is far away/ Europe is farther, many nights, many days/ My simple song flies around, sails away/ And then it comes home again/ Hey normals, let's play rock/ Tuva dot rock". Recommended.