As well as being a ceilidh band who would be great to dance to, Albireo have made an album in which every track is worth listening to in its own right. Although I’m writing this review in January, this is already down on my “CD of the year” list.


Gordon Potter


NIAMH NI CHARRA, IBON KOTERON & GAVIN RALSTON


Ó Euskadi Go hÉirinn – The


Basque Irish Connection Imeartas Records IMCD003


MAGPIE LANE


The Robber Bird Private Label MLCD08


What I really like about Magpie Lane, and which provides a thread of consistency running through their 18-year-so-far career, is the way their unflashily expert musicianship informs their performing style and keeps it fresh. Long may they thrive.


www.magpielane.co.uk David Kidman


BRUCE MACGREGOR &


CHRISTINE HANSON Kissin’ Is The Best Of A’ Brechin All Records CDBAR016


Although a primary function of Arts Councils is to promote their own cultures, it is always encouraging to see that some can appreciate what is happening elsewhere. The Arts Council of Ireland funded Music Network, who have worked with Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia and Leonen Orroak to produce this truly outstanding example of how musicians can explore similarities and differences between their cultures. The principal performers are Ibon Koteron, albokas, gaita, txistus, vocals; Niamh Ni Charra, concertina, fiddle, vocals; and Gavin Ralston, guitars; with a number of guests, from both backgrounds. The songs and tunes are a mixture of traditional and original compositions, and show that there are universal themes which cut across all nationalities, such as love, hope, concern and drinking, yet there are innumerable ways in which to express these.


The instrumentation provides some of the most obvious differences, and here we get an opportunity to hear the txistu, a three-hole whistle of great antiquity; the alboka, a pipe made of horn with a double clarinet reed, also of great age; and the gaita, another pipe, but with an oboe reed. There is also a chance to contrast and compare the tempos and time signatures in what is a fascinating and highly entertaining album, with the playing and singing of the highest standards throughout.


The accompanying notes are an excellent source of information, in Euskal, Irish and English, which give equal weight to explanations of the music and histories of both the cultures. Let’s have more co-operations like this!


Gordon Potter The Living Tradition - Page 44


This eighth studio album from the highly respected Oxfordshire five-piece presents a snapshot of the band’s current repertoire, which (unsurprisingly) majors on joyful and committed performances of English traditional songs and dance tunes, mixing well-loved repertoire (albeit in less-often-heard versions) with several items you’re not likely to have heard before. Their tried and tested, intensely vital approach is typified by the opening selection, The Lark In The Morning, nothing less than a jolly celebration of ploughboys’ sexual prowess, which is generously topped and tailed with a lively dance tune (The Muffin Man). Other instrumental selections are equally colourfully presented, with fiddle, cello, melodeon, anglo- concertina, harmonica, bouzouki and guitar all united in happy counterpoint.


The group’s blessed with an abundance of good singers, whose warm and thoroughly idiomatic performances (especially those of percussionist Ian Giles) give the group’s renditions a distinctively lusty character; together their harmony work is exemplary. Their exuberant ensemble singing on the shanty Hanging Johnny is inventively incorporated into a loosely crime-and-punishment-themed set midway through the disc that gleefully concludes with John Kirkpatrick’s Shreds And Patches. Another vocal highlight is Sophie Thurman’s confident take on the classic love song The Turtle Dove from the RVW collection. The final track on this new CD, however, is a comparatively uncharacteristic (for Magpie Lane) departure into contemporary tradition: a responsive take on When The Snows Of Winter Fall, from the pen of one of our finest living songwriters, Graeme Miles. Elsewhere, no fewer than three of the disc’s tracks see the group revisiting earlier successes: firstly, The Shepherd’s Song (originally rendered acappella on the Speed The Plough CD) is here most attractively sandwiched between two vigorous morris tunes, whereas Oxford City (a perennial favourite of the band’s live sets), was originally recorded as far back as their first CD in 1993, and now comes in a more focused, freshly stripped-back voice-and-guitar garb; finally, The Highwayman Outwitted now sports a completely new musical arrangement, no doubt occasioned by the adoption of a slightly different set of words.


Since Alasdair Fraser’s experiments with Ron Shaw in the 1980s, the combination of fiddle and cello has enjoyed an enormous revival in Scottish music. Fraser still leads the field, now with Natalie Haas at his side, but MacGregor and Hanson have followed in their footsteps and this debut duo recording is a treat indeed. The cello is not as prominent as I would wish at times, but it underpins the fiddle beautifully. The addition of guitar and piano is perhaps an unnecessary complication on several tracks, although it does allow Bruce and Christine to vary the sound, with the backing duties falling to Tim Edey and Brian McAlpine.


Bruce MacGregor’s fiddle swoops through Scottish classics such as Clydesdale Lasses, Miss Shepherd, Mrs Grant Of Grant, as well as some toe-tapping tunes of his own. Short And Simple is a particularly catchy new reel. There are several striking slower tracks too: Gin Ye Kiss My Wife, Nancy’s Waltz, Skinner’s fiddle pibroch Dargai, and Bruce’s composition Lament For Captain Simon Fraser which ends this selection. I wasn’t so taken with the American oldtime Sunday River Waltz, but it does have some great cello harmonies. Nancy’s Waltz and Bruce’s Caithness Cowboy tribute to fellow fiddler Gordon Gunn, manage to keep that western swing but hold the cheese.


The cello part varies between a tenor melody or counter-melody, as on Mr A G Wilken’s Favourite, and a range of accompaniments. Bass drones on The Perthshire Hunt give way to broken chords for the title tune, and some strenuous bowing, then a more conventional bass line. The basso continuo style is particularly effective, reviving the raw power of


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