There’s a spate of interesting albums by instrumental groups around at the moment, and two of them act as the bookends this week. Like many radio programmers, I tend to use instrumentals as elastic bands to tie up the programme, using as much or as little as there is time for at the end. That’s partly because musicians playing instrumental music seem to have abandoned all thought of radio play and extend their tracks far beyond the tolerance of most radio producers. This week, we start with one as well.

The American silent film comedian Buster Keaton features in both the band name and on the cover of the by album Finnish guitarist, Markku Peltola, hinting at the humour of the arrangements and the sounds within. He does have one 12 minute tune and two more that are over six, but four hover around the three minute mark. The music roams between jazz, folk and Markku’s rich imagination.

Free Spirits comprises four musicians from Leeds in the North of England, who confound my low expectations of improvised Indo-Jazz. For each mini-masterpiece by musicians in this field, there are many acres of meandering meaninglessness, but this outfit makes each moment matter.

Playing ‘Milenu’ by Tewelde Redda out of context, I thought I had found a track by a Touareg group from the Malian border, but then realised that this is just another of the gems uncovered on The Very Best of Ethiopiques, properly recognised as Compilation Album of 2007 (in any genre) in The Observer’s Music Monthly Magazine.

In the mid-1980s, when Gipsy Kings were conquering the Western world, Los Niños de Sara, another Spanish-speaking group from Montpelier in South West France, set out with a similar sound. They were doing only OK until they ran across Ishtar Alabina, a young Israeli who had come to France looking for musicians to sing with. The song ‘Alabina’ launched the combination to a long lasting career in France and Spain, but as far as I know they never played the UK. The song resurfaces on the highly recommended compilation, The Rough Guide to Latin Arabia.

‘Una Nocha Mas’ (One Night More) continues to feel like the ‘hit’ from Yasmin Levy’s latest album, the one I keep coming back to after listening again to the other songs.

I first encountered Rona Hartner in Tony Gatliff’s film, Gadjo Dilo, in 1997, when I had the impression that she was first of all an arresting actress who sang only as a sideline. I haven’t kept note of all her activities since, but she turns up as a very convincing singer on the soundtrack of the forthcoming film The Edge of Heaven, for which Shantel is music consultant and composer. The whole album is strong, but the standout song is the collaboration of Shantel, Rona and DJ Click, ‘Inel Inel De Aur’.

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