Trio Mandili – With Love (Merlins Nose Records, 2016)

Listen/buy link: https://merlinsnoserecords.bandcamp.com/album/with-love

This is the debut album of a trio of young ladies from Georgia in the Caucasus area and their story actually sounds fantastic. Being into singing folk songs and filming one day the three girls made a recording of the love song “Apareka” and that video gained them 3.000.000 views on Youtube right away. It is folk, three ladies singing to the sound of classic Eurasian stringed instruments such as the panduri and tschonguri, long necked lutes. The all acoustic instrumentation can be considered as the soil from which the voices of the three lead singers rise with the one or another instrumental line going deeper than that of course. It might sound like a miracle that this music gained so much attention in a time of flat ass streamline plastic pop but if you take a closer listen to “With love” you will realize that it does justice to its title. The melodies sung by the girls grab you by the heart immediately and fasten in your soul right away. This is some passionate brand of Eastern, Caucasian folk and has an enchanting approach within the melodies. The girls sing with a very determined expression in their performance. The TRIO MANDILI seems to be much more than just a group of young ladies playing music. There is a kind of mystical atmosphere rising from this compilation of simple love songs coming straight from the heart. The spiritual vibe shall not be underestimated here. This music will increase the frequency of your vibrancy and literally enlighten you. The compositions themselves may be rather simple as it is the fact with most classic folk tunes from allover the centuries but the emotional depth is amazing and the performance is utterly tight. You cannot get any better. If you love folk music and would like to head a bit more east to discover something fresh and exciting, this will be what you are looking for. The vocal performances belong to the most impressive I ever experienced and I have been listening to quite a bit of music over the past decades. Grab your copy now.

Review by ‘Sir Lord Doom’/2016

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