Folk & World
Real World Records · 25 September 2026
Sixteen live and session takes, all recorded in one pass: Echo is the collection Sheila Chandra has assembled from a search through everything that was ever captured of her concerts and her radio and television sessions. The vinyl edition carries ten of them; the digital adds six more and runs to sixty-five minutes.
The bulk comes from the voice-and-drone trilogy of the nineties, and the four parts of “Speaking in Tongues” are spread across it: III (2:18) opens the record, II (3:06) sits in the middle, and I (1:55) and IV (4:04) are among the digital additions. These are the vocal-percussion pieces, the fast syllabic patter inherited from South Indian konnakol, and live, with no possibility of editing, you can hear exactly how far the technique went.
“Ever So Lonely / Eyes / Ocean” (4:49) links the single that put Monsoon in the British charts in 1982 to two later pieces, and it’s the record’s only concession to the audience that found her there. “Nana / The Dreaming / Fine Horseman” (8:28), the longest piece, and “Lament of McCrimmon / Song of the Banshee” (5:57) are the two points where unaccompanied voice over drone stretches out far enough to make the case for itself. There’s also material from Roots and Wings (1990) and one track from the first Imagined Village tour, in 2007.
Chandra lost her voice fifteen years ago and has not sung since; the title glances at the Greek nymph who lost hers. She explains the selection this way: “In every case, I have chosen feeling over precision – even, in some cases, chosen ‘soul’ over the best available recording quality.” She presents it as her last album.
The format never varies — one voice, one drone, nothing to contradict it — and sixty-five minutes of that in a row is too much. The six pieces added to the digital edition are precisely the ones that hold up least: “Shanti Shanti Shanti” (0:54) and “Shehnai Song” (1:45) are sketches, and placed at the end they lengthen the record without adding to it. The ten-track vinyl is the version that works.
Sixteen tracks digital and ten on vinyl, sixty-five minutes, Real World Records, 25 September.
Rating: 7.4/10
Text by Alba Puiggròs