f64 DONALD SHAW


Hebrides – Islands On The Edge: Original Score Vertical Records VERTCD098


Donald Shaw is musical director of Glasgow Celtic Connections and keyboardist/ accordeonist/ founder of folk band Capercail- lie. He’s also an award-winning composer of TV/film soundtracks. Viewers of BBC Alba’s Horo Gheallaidh will know what a fine pianist and music arranger Donald is: my favourite performances by singers such as Iarla Ó Lionáird, Karen Matheson and Kath- leen MacInnes have been their duets with Donald on piano.


Donald’s soundtrack for the BBC TV


series Hebrides – Islands on the Edge features A-list Scottish and Irish traditional musicians: Aidan O’Rourke and Patsy Reid (fiddles), Michael McGoldrick (flute, uilleann pipes), Sorren MacLean and Ian Carr (guitars), Catri- ona MacKay (harp), Manus Lunny (bouzouki) and Donald Shaw (piano). It also features a small orchestra of violins, violas, cellos and double-bass, played by classically-trained ‘crossover’ musicians (such as Greg Lawson and Alastair Savage) who make their living in both classical and folk music.


Hebrides is an emotional musical jour-


ney. It starts like Keith Jarrett on solo piano, and ends like Erik Satie on solo piano. In- between is a gloriously lush folk suite in the tradition of William Jackson’s and Shaun Davey’s compositions for Scottish and Irish folk orchestras in the 1980s and ’90s. The music is stirring, uplifting and cathartic. The average TV/film soundtrack loses something when taken away from the visual images it accompanies, but Hebrides is a complete and self-sufficient composition. It begins with Iona – a prelude for solo piano in which the notes emerge from the darkness like the spir- it moving upon the face of the deep. Then a rhythmic pulse of guitar and percussion join the piano, a flute hovers overhead, and a fid- dle leads the orchestra into a sweet poignant melody – like the first rays of sunlight at dawn. The suite leads us on into the dancing, restless energy of Corryvreckan, and to the yearning, plaintive Horizon, its melody flit- ting from fiddle to flute to uilleann pipes. The title track Islands On The Edge is sweep- ing, magnificent and yet wistful, like the islands it describes. A Precious Place is a high- ly emotive counterpoint between piano and fiddle against the quivering hum of the orchestra surging like an ocean in the back- ground.


Shaw has a gift for composing deeply moving melodies (such as Breisleach on Capercaillie’s Delirium CD). This achingly beautiful suite of music is as good as any- thing he’s done. www.verticalrecords.co.uk


Paul Matheson


HELSINKI-COTONOU ENSEMBLE Beaucoup De Piment No Problem Music


Frozen Finland meets boiling Benin, which sounds like a treat for both parties and also the hungry listener. The story is that three Finns went to West Africa to investigate deep voodoo rhythms and they ended up with most of this CD and a band ready to tour the stages of the world. Weather Report meets Fela, you might say. They are good enough.


First impression is indeed something like afrobeat. Reasonable: Cotonou is an hour down the coast from Nigerian border. That impression is followed by a swaggering lump of big-band jazz – TV detective music, seamlessly blending bold horns and snaky rhythms. There’s even a rather polite form of rap to open The Gong, but it soon moves on. There’s plenty of variety, but actually this


band doesn’t step too far from where it excels – arrangements that are complex but still somehow clean and powerful. All is well- regulated.


The pre-eminent figure in the band –


producer, co-engineer and songwriter (with percussionist Noël Saïzonou) – is one Janne Halonen. He also happens to be a dramatic and eloquent guitar player, equally convinc- ing on stabbing interjection and fast, lyrical runs. He often takes the lead – and how lucky he is to have such a sharp and intelligent gang of collaborators. And such a rich and potent range of rhythms on which to build.


www.helsinkicotonouensemble.com Rick Sanders


ALAW Melody Taith Records TRCD00016


Hot on the heels of Delyth and Angharad Jenkins’ beautiful album Adnabod (Fflach:Tradd, CD347H, reviewed in fRoots 362/363) comes another high-profile release of acoustic Welsh tunes, this time from a male trio: Jamie Smith (accordeon) and Oliver Wil- son-Dickson (fiddle), both of tunes band Mabon, and the latter’s stepfather Dylan Fowler, one of Wales’ finest folk guitarists and a sensitive producer of acoustic music (his exceptional work with Julie Murphy and Ember springs to mind). So, a small super- group of sorts, and their brief: to resurrect and reinterpret various traditional Welsh tunes, mostly little known even in Wales, and combine them in new sets of two, three or four, in true session style.


Funded by the Welsh Arts Council, this CD may well serve the wider purpose of intro- ducing Wales’ previously ailing session scene (currently on a much-needed drip from TRAC, Clera et al) to some new and challenging tunes. One can appreciate the need for an eclectic and contemporary sounding album like this, and with some flair, skilful arranging and careful selection, the trio have done an admirable job taking things in the right direc- tion, crafting an album packed with lively and fresh sounding trads. There is purpose - fully no original material included, despite Jamie’s talent as a ‘tunesmith’ (his songbook of that title has been recently published).


As to the playing on this trove of trea- sures, the first thing to comment on is Fowler’s exquisite guitar work, which can strum and thunder away when it needs to, but is more often uniquely delicate and harp- like, on tunes such as Ar Foren Teg, or the


Alaw JOHN KIRKPATRICK BAND


The Complete John Kirkpatrick Band Fledg’ling FLED3091


If failures can ever be deemed heroic, then the John Kirkpatrick Band of the mid-’90s was that beast. A survivor of the great folk-rock wars, JK had been asked to form a ten-piece outfit for a BBC radio session with the notion that a national folk ensemble would duly emerge as a result. It didn’t but, buoyed by those radio sessions, JK boldly decided to hit the road with a trimmed-down version involv- ing former Albion Band comrades Graeme Taylor and Mike Gregory on electric guitar and drums respectively, with Paul Burgess on fiddle, keyboards and recorder and Dave Berry on bass.


A couple of decades earlier it would have been sensational but by then interest in English folk music generally was in the dol- drums and the whole folk-rock idiom in par- ticular was deemed an outdated irrelevance. The result was the whole thing became a financial disaster which bit the dust with a resounding thud.


deliciously melancholic closing track Wil a’i Fam. Livelier numbers such as the catchy Craig Y Ddinas and the sung Y Ddau Farch add accessibility to the collection. If there is a criticism it’s that it does become apparent after a while that the fiddle and accordeon lack the gentle gravitas of the guitar parts; there’s something of a flatness to the playing occasionally, especially on the faster tunes – perhaps Mabon’s high-octane stompalongs haven’t allowed the melodists to develop the tonal sublety necessary here? With pretty cheesy Photoshopped artwork capping off the youthful vigour of the package, Alaw’s Melody will certainly make an impression, and despite occasional lapses into breeziness, makes an interesting and welcome contribu- tion to the Cymric trad scene.


www.alaw-band.com Nathan Williams


KERFALA KANTE JUNIOR Aventurier Road Music no cat no


The recording quality may occasionally lack edge, the packaging may be somewhat DIY but never mind. This debut album from Salif Keita’s bass player contains outstandingly beautiful music. Simply, Kante is a glorious singer. What’s more, he’s got the best musi- cians in Bamako as his band. The way he works with them, a seamless assembly of modern and traditional instruments, conjures an instant sense of ease, depth and grace. This music is generous, full of happy touches, a whole range of moods and rhythms. Every- one’s playing out of their skins.


Much of it will sound familiar. There’s no doubt that Kerfala has learned a lot about singing and arrangement from his master- class employment with Salif Keita – his sense of pace and phrasing, the honesty of his pre- sentation, his understanding of drama – though he does not have Keita’s blow-torch intensity, at least not here. But the way he takes chances, the dancing complexity of his rhythms, the peculiar way he has of cutting off with abrupt finales, much is reminiscent of Keita’s Amen, particularly, as is the sublime way he deploys his female backing singers. These ladies are surely the warmest, most beguiling sirens ever.


I’ve been playing this CD over and over, without tiring. For anyone with the slightest fondness for Malian music, it marks a high point. Not to be missed.


www.roadmusic.org Rick Sanders


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