managed to tour such a size of band profitably is un-fathomable – but possibly a factor in their early lamented demise). Therefore, it is for some a finding of the mother lode for the ¼” tape found in the sound engineer’s wardrobe of a gig at Cambridge Festival in 1986. That Graeme Taylor has been able to salvage this gem is remarkable.


The quality throughout is outstanding – Home Service’s finest hour – captured live. All the classic HS songs are here – Walk My Way and Alright Jack are easily as exciting as their studio counterparts. Peat Bog Soldiers is just sublime. An unclaimed treasure – dash out and capture your own personal trove. Well packaged, but sadly with a dearth of songwriting credits, though you don’t need many forensic skills to identify they were mostly trad or Tams in origin. These guys were most definitely the business.


Grem Devlin


PEATBOG FAERIES Dust Peatbog Records CDBOG006


minor jig. Drums join, then electronic effects. The pipes take up the melody, with pipe band style percussion, then a host of synthesized sounds mimic seagulls, weather, radio, whales and other maritime phenomena, Drop back to electric guitar and congas, a South Pacific soundscape, then gentle fiddle reminiscent of Fingal’s Cave, then all stop. From Skye to sea to soul and back again, and that’s just one track.


There are gentle tracks like Spigel And Nongo or Passport Panic, feistier tracks like Abhainn a’Nathair or The Naughty Step, extra weirdness on Marx Terrace, and the simple beauty of Fishing At Orbost. The Faeries finish up with some Caribbean craziness in Room 215, including Irish pipes from Jarlath Henderson. Nothing too extreme, all in the best possible taste (maybe), and a cracking good hour of new Scottish music altogether. www. peatbogfaeries.com has the low-down and the downloads.


Alex Monaghan


SAFFRON SUMMERFIELD Halcyon


Mother Earth Music MUM2011


stamping-ground, this location providing the setting for a standout song that gains much from Saffron’s potent bottleneck guitar atmospherics). Saffron also still espouses a passionate concern for environmental issues on songs like the hard-hitting Pity The Farmer and the altogether more whimsical Marigolds On The Moon. There’s A Place derives its inspiration from Saffron’s reading of a book by the St. Leonard’s-on-Sea artist Angie Biltcliffe, while the disc’s supremely lovely title track evokes its subject via some beautiful imagery set to the ruminations of a lazy Tex-Mex-style accordion (played by Duncan Curtis, who’s also responsible for the sensitive, gently brooding musical arrangements throughout the whole disc). The Mary Stanford Lifeboat Disaster introduces its narrative with a sample of speech from a resident of Rye Harbour (the setting for the tale itself).


As for Saffron’s mature and delicately shaded vocal performance, well I’d vow her singing is even more compelling and precisely expressive on this new album than hitherto, and the intense assurance of her instrumental accomplishment creates its own kind of subliminal magic in full accord with her singing. Saffron has here made a most welcome comeback, and this new record should afford the chance for a whole new contingent of fans to discover her talent.


David Kidman FIONA CUTHILL AND


STEVIE LAWRENCE A Cruel Kindness Fellside FECD244


Smooth, sophisticated, thoughtful: these aren’t words I would previously have associated with the hairy highland heidbangers we know and love as The Peatbog Faeries, but Dust is different. In some ways it marks a return to their Mellowosity days, with electronic backtracks underlying relatively traditional themes repeated hypnotically. However, the PBF of today is much slicker and studio-savvy than the fresh-faced fellas on that first album. That’s not to say they’ve lost their freshness and spark: their music may now be dressed in linen and cashmere rather than homespun wool, but the pattern is still tartan and tweed, and the colours still hit you between the eyes like a musket ball.


Jacobite and shortbread-tin metaphors aren’t really appropriate any more: this is modern music, written for and played by a generation who think MacDonalds is a restaurant and Campbells is a brand of soup. (They’re right about one of those.) That doesn’t stop Dust being great traditional music - the core of this CD is still Scottish pipes and fiddle, it just adds layers of modern enhancement. Take Dun Brae, for instance. Named after a broch on Skye, an ancient pre-celtic tower associated with faerie folk, this Peter Morrison composition covers all the Peatbog bases. It starts with a funky guitar intro, then some slow fiddle and banjo, before the whistle and fiddle play a catchy


Sponsored by BIrnam CD


Saffron’s last record of new songs, The Stonemason’s Dream, was released all of nine years ago, since when she’s been very much occupied with radio and TV work and various innovative projects for Public Sound Arts. Halcyon almost exactly mirrors the pattern and proportion of its predecessor in containing six new originals and two arrangements of traditional folk songs. The latter are distinctive in their creative approach: The Cuckoo forms a seductive and quite cheeky little interlude in proceedings between two weightier original songs, whereas Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair is an especially ear-catching calling-card that makes for an impressive start to the album, quite uncompromisingly placing its idiosyncratic vocal treatment (Saffron’s silky “mother earth” singing voice swooping and scatting, inventing its own weird and wonderful kind of melody line) over, above and through her singularly restless, edgy Spanish guitar traceries.


Elsewhere, Saffron’s latest batch of songs occupies the special artistic territory born out of the unique character of her local landscape (notably the area around Dungeness, situated close to the boundary with her East Sussex


This CD brings together two of the country’s most ubiquitous performers, who are currently playing in the group Rallion, and who have pedigrees as long as a Border Ballad, being in huge demand as session musicians everywhere you listen.


Fiona plays fiddle and here Stevie, as well as singing, plays guitar, bouzouki, bass, percussion and hurdy gurdy. To add to this mixture, the guests are Brendan McCreanor, uillean pipes, whistle; Fraser Spiers, harmonica; Rachel Hair, harp; Wendy Weatherby, cello; Celine Donoghue, banjo; and Greg Friel, backing vocals. Festival organisers the country over (and further) would drool at the prospect of putting on such a line-up!


The Living Tradition - Page 53


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