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into the slow air The Wounded Hussar. Other notable tune sets include The Badge (a jig and reel set by Henderson, characterised by extensive “harmonic wandering”), GM(a “mangled, half-heard version” of Brian Finnegan’s Hayden’s Rock, paired with the traditional The Old Maids of Galway) and Dean’s Banjo.


An ambitious new setting of the WB


Yeats poem Hosting Of The Sidhe (previously tackled by The Waterboys) and a version of Huntley Town (which eschews the familiar Bogey’s Bonnie Belle tune in favour of their own minimal, minor-key melody) both demonstrate Teyr’s collective skill but also show that, individually, they don’t possess the vocal authority of a Mike Scott or a Christy Moore. That’s not to say that their singing is without merit of course. They can and do impress – particularly on the harmonies of False Lady (a version of Young Hunting).


Other songs include the traditional Banks Of The Newfoundland – found in the 1966 collection Canow Kernow: Songs and Dances from Cornwall, and Nothing Grows – the words of which were written by Fer- managh poet Stephen Muldoon.


Orquestra De Jazz De Galicia


sion. At times, as on Alarm, there’s a touch that could almost be Scottish – then again, no surprise since the music of the two countries has a few commonalities. But there’s plenty of joy here, and plenty to make the listener smile. They’re at their best when they allow a little wildness to intrude, but everything calms before an explosion.


Elsewhere, the atmospheric opening of


Mykines clears into a slow, rippling piece that becomes a languid showcase for Simon Krebs’ guitar work. Through the album, though, all the musicians have a turn in the spotlight. They’re all veterans of the Danish folk scene, letting the music speak for itself, whether swirling towards jazz or the delicate beauty of something that could be derived from a hymn. It’s all instrumental bar the final track, the gentle longing of Farvel. It’s the closest to folk music that the band comes: guitar, voic- es, fiddle, before the other instruments arrive in a soft breeze of sound. A band that’s arrived fully formed.


www.brakogblik.dk Chris Nickson


ORQUESTRA DE JAZZ DE GALICIA Fame Radio Galega


Often, in meetings between a European tra- ditional music and jazz, the result shows more about the differences between the gen- res than connections. The tight melodic and rhythmic structures of most European tradi- tional musics don’t lend themselves particu- larly well to explorations by often US-jazz-ori- ented musicians who, while very skilled, aren’t familiar with them.


The big band Orquestra Jazz De Galicia, led by Galician jazz musician and arranger Roberto Somoza and tradition-rooted sopra- no saxist and bagpiper Pedro Lamas (of Radio Cos, Vaamonde, Lamas & Romero et al) and comprising musicians from traditional, jazz and symphonic music, goes a long way towards changing that.


As the notes in the elegant book-sized package, a concertina strip of pages with the CD set into the front cover, point out, this isn’t the first jazz-Galician meeting – that was Miles Davis and Gil Evans in The Pan Piper in the 1960s on Sketches of Spain, which was based on Alan Lomax’s recording of the melody played on chifre (panpipes) by a pig castrator from Ourense. That same evocative 1952 field recording appears here, at the


beginning of track three, forming the intro to a misty, surging, hurdy-gurdy-prefaced arrangement based on it. At the end of the CD is a set of short extracts, from field record- ings from the collections of Pedro Lamas, Xabier Díaz and Radio Galega, of the songs and instrumental melodies that form the basis for most of the other tracks.


The band numbers more than 20 leading Galician musicians, on brass, reeds, flute, vibraphone, piano, guitar, double bass, and drums, plus Germán Díaz on hurdy-gurdy and Xosé Lois Romero on Galician percussion, joined by guests, well-known figures on the very strong traditional music scene, including singers Carmen París and Guadi Galego, singers/pandeireta players Quique Peón, Xurxo Fernández (both of Radio Cos) and Xabier Díaz, harpist Rodrigo Romaní, gaiteiro Edelmiro Fernández, and Basque trikitilaria Kepa Junkera.


The jazz, traditional and classical musi- cians and their traditions meet on equal terms and blend in big, rich, melodious devel- opments of the material that extend into all those genres with a seamlessness born of mutual respect, enthusiasm and musician- ship. There’s a lot to listen to here, with more shapes and details emerging on each listen. The album title Fame doesn’t indicate an aspiration to stardom, it’s the Galego word for hunger, but the Orquestra, with its lumi- nary line-up and ongoing concerts is, deservedly, a big thing in Galicia, and won Best Album and Best Artist in Galicia’s 2016 Opinión roots music awards.


facebook.com/orquestradejazzdegalicia Andrew Cronshaw


TEYR


Far From The Tree Sleight Of Hand Records SOHR1601CD


A hard-working trio who first coalesced in North London’s Irish trad session scene in 2012, James Gavin (guitar and fiddle), Dominic Henderson (uilleann pipes and whis- tles) and Tommie Black-Roff (accordeon) are all hugely impressive instrumentalists.


Inspired by the likes of Lúnasa, Lau and Kan, this debut album doesn’t stray far from the well-established ‘contemporary trad’ path, but their inventiveness within that framework is amply demonstrated by the likes of Reeds & Fipple – a Henderson reel which (in a nifty reversal of the customary start slow-finish fast arrangement) mutates


Produced by Gerry Diver, this is a distinct- ly modern album by a group of urban Celts with chops and ambition to spare.


teyr.co.uk Steve Hunt MOULETTES


Preternatural Craft Pop Records CRAFTPOP1CD


With their fourth album, Moulettes hold up a lens to the weird and applaud the grotesque, all the while saluting the mundane. Put sim- ply, it is a concept album, focusing on the idiosyncrasies of our bonkers natural world. Musically, Preternatural is a kaleidoscopic macrocosm of colour and pattern, from the cetacean creature that is the opening Behe- mooth to the wailing klaxon vocal line of anthemic Underwaterpainter. The tumul- tuous three-part female harmony that makes their sound so instantly recognisable is part- nered with restless electric cello, distorted bassoon, and autoharp.


Each song zooms in on an oddity of nature. The pufferfish that draws concentric circles in sand to attract a mate, the biolumi- nescent light show of the octopus, the spider that plucks harmonies on its web, the Hali- cephalobus mephisto – the deepest-living animal ever found on Earth. We are thrown through this absurd world on a high-speed rail, grasping snatches of views of parasites, patterns and paradise that surely cannot be real. It is about us too, us as spectator, point- ing at the sky, us as threat, foreseeing the extinction of species, “when all the singers are all gone”.


Celebrating the architects of the natural world, Moulettes are world-builders them- selves, and as they describe the creatures of their songs, “suspended halfway between the miraculous and the everyday”.


www.moulettes.co.uk Kitty Macfarlane


POLKAHOLIX


Sex & Drugs & Sauerkraut Monopol Records M 5414


In the annals of the pre-Reunification Ger- man folk and dance scene the Polkaholix main man Jo Meyer was one of the prime movers of the folk scene in the German Democratic Republic. His reputation arose through his key status as a champion of the much maligned East German bagpipe and his


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