61 f


Built largely around fiddle, banjo, guitar and accordeon, Inlay have developed a trade- mark sound but one that doesn’t risk becom- ing predictable. Classically trained but with a shared and long-standing passion for the folk tradition, the band have not been afraid of bringing a wide variety of influences both to their playing and to their compositions.


The Road To Varanasi is inspired by a north Indian ‘Kalyan’ rag following a trip around India by two of the band members, with suit- ably evocative sounds played on a bansitar (a cross between a sitar and a banjo) and melded with some lovely accordeon playing. Other tracks draw their influences from closer to home, whether it’s the Norfolk landscape, the Pembrokeshire coast or the London tube.


Choral influences are evident in much of the singing which, again, helps to make Inlay more than simply one more talented folk band on the scene. Subtle but beautifully atmospheric percussion also adds to the mix making Forge a fine album.


This second album from Inlay helps showcase both their considerable musical tal- ents as well as the breadth of their musical influences. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another four years for the next one.


inlaymusic.co.uk Darren Johnson


GROUPA Kind Of Folk – Vol 1 Sweden All Ice 1613


Today’s Groupa is a different beast from the ‘80s and ‘90s versions. For the last few years it’s been the trio of original member fiddler Mats Edén with flautist Jonas Simonsson and Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset (who in his parallel life is the ‘ice-man’, making and playing instruments of ice and founder of Geilo Ice Festival).


Its music is a minimalist thing, just Edén’s sympathetic-string fiddles – deep-pitched viola d’amore and higher hardanger fiddle – and Simonson’s keyed, open-hole and har- monic flutes and whistles, hovering chord- free, airily or whispering, over Isungset’s very personal kit of deep bass drum and clicking, rattling, fluttering, chiming or grinding wood or metal, or buzzing jew’s-harp, in traditional polskas, wedding marches, polskas, herding tunes and calls, interwoven with slow, spa- cious improvising textures.


All three are deeply able and long- experienced, intuitive musicians, and what they’re making here summons perhaps some- thing of the old sensibilities of Swedish and Norwegian musics, while treading a fine line between meaningful substance and a feeling of waiting, as in an extended mood-setting intro. Which side of that line it falls can depend on the time of day or one’s own mood. At brisker times it can irritate with impatience; just now, on a very dark grey gloomy New Year’s Day, it mostly suits.


all-ice.no Andrew Cronshaw


CARREG LAFAR Aur Sain SAIN SCD2754


This is Carreg Lafar’s fourth album, released to mark their 20th anniversary. Their previous three albums are all regarded as classics, and Carreg Lafar has long been a band against which others are measured. They conjure a big, surging, confident sound-palette from the line-up of Linda Owen Jones (lead vocals), Rhian Evan Jones (fiddle, kantele), James Rourke (wooden flute, whistle), Antwn Owen-Hicks (bagpipes, vocals, whistle, cajon, shruti) and Danny Kilbride (guitars, bouzouki, vocals, bass).


This album, like its predecessors, is a treasure chest of Welsh traditional songs and tunes. In his introduction to the Rough Guide To The Music Of Wales, Ceri Rhys Matthews points out that Welsh traditional music has kept mediæval, Renaissance and baroque mainstream European musical elements with- in its corpus. This album is a striking illustration of those musical characteristics. For example, the Y Cadno song and dance set has a delight- ful skip-rhythm that gives the set a Breton fest-noz quality. The traditional Welsh ballads Cariad Aur and Bwthyn Fy Nain and Glan Mor Heli all have sultry, sinuous, lush melodies that sound like Canteloube’s Songs Of The Auvergne, with the richly-textured contralto voice of Linda Owen Jones bringing that resemblance out fully, along with the sweep- ing, majestic instrumental accompaniment.


Aderyn Bach (Rew Di Ranno) is a very old song for dancing. The folk wisdom of these ancient verses is a Welsh poetic distillation of Matthew 6:26 that takes us back to the Fran- ciscan teaching of the mediæval Welsh friars (“Consider the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap… yet our heavenly Father feeds them”). This joyous song is thrillingly spliced together with a Welsh traditional slip-jig played on old Welsh bagpipes, which have a sweet, mellifluous tone not unlike the Span- ish gaita.


One final thought. With Saint Valentine’s Day fast approaching, mention should be made of the beguiling arrangement of Titr- wm Tatrwm as a male-female duet. Titrwm Tatrwm is a night-visiting song from Angle- sey, ‘titrwm tatrwm’ being the ‘pitter-patter’ sound of tiny stones being thrown at the bed- room window of the young lady by the besot- ted young man outside. Romantic beyond!


carreglafar.co.uk Paul Matheson


STEELEYE SPAN Dodgy Bastards Park Records PRKCD148


This’ll wake you up!


Post Wintersmith Steeleye could so easily have played it safe with membership chang- ing and decisions to be made about reper- toire and how to follow a high profile release. Yet talking to them in the interim it was obvious they wanted to make a state- ment. Here it is and it’s loud. Stylistically, the arrival of first Jesse May Smart and then Spud Sinclair has meant they’ve the variety and chops in the line-up to focus on the big bal- lads, the sort of tracks Bob Johnson used to shape, gothic, full of death, murder and the


Steeleye Span


arcane. Like the sounds of King Henry, Alison Gross, Long Lankin, Thomas The Rhymer? You’ll love this then. Most items happily go well beyond the six or seven minute mark and with only a couple of lightweight entries that leaves plenty of meat.


Not everything is strident but there is a


rowdy, boisterous, even raucous element about the majority of the tracks with Kemp and Genockey providing a really heavy, defi- nite undertow. That gives quite a trampoline for Smart’s classical prog violin, Sinclair’s lead pyrotechnics and Julian Littman’s dexterity to bounce off. Which just leaves Maddy… she’s having a ball and it shows in her performance which is confident and wonderfully assured.


With no messing about, The Cruel Broth-


er gets us underway, a deceptively innocent chorus and verses laden with malice, it thun- ders to a close followed by a totally contrast- ing All Things Are Quite Silent. Rescued from obscurity on Hark! The Village Wait, it’s Maddy, her voice is poignant and moving over a soaring fiddle line and cycling electric lead. Brown Robyn’s Confession has Jesse May handling the vocals in a dreamlike arrangement where a murder gets hefted out of the ocean by the Virgin Mary. And if you think that’s unlikely then Two Sisters –yet more internecine gore and magic – with a talking harp full of accusation, is from anoth- er place entirely. It works splendidly with guests Hattie Webb and John Spiers provid- ing harp and squeezebox in among the melée, the band playing brash and tight. It’ll be in their repertoire for a long time to come.


Likewise the title slice, a rapid-fire party jig in which both new members excel, playing off each other’s melody lines and trading licks that could well have come from the high days of Chrysalis. If your feet don’t move they must be in concrete. Just space to mention The Gardener, another piece of sorcery which has a peerless Prior vocal, as does the wind- down shanty Shallow Brown, sung gently and with tenderness before a long instrumental coda to close out.


I’m glad they’ve stuck with the title, which there were thoughts of changing. Rick Kemp’s decision to leave at the end of the tour, just when he’d penned a centrepiece with Cromwell’s Skull, will no doubt add another twist and speculation will be rife on the web. Up with the volume, risks duly taken, clear production, intention sorted, statement made then; Steeleye’s just got a brand new set of wheels.


parkrecords.com Simon Jones


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