Mouth Music

Before there were Celtic/funk artists like Afro Celt Sound System and Martyn Bennett, there was Mouth Music — basically multi-instrumentalist and producer Martin Swan with a shifting array of collaborators over the years. The eponymous debut album remains Mouth Music’s finest hour, a bracing, disciplined, and deeply funky album as engaging melodically as it is rhythmically. The featured vocalist here is the brilliant Scottish-American singer Talitha Mackenzie, whose solo albums subsequently explored somewhat similar territory.