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121 f NATHAN BOWLES


Plainly Mistaken Paradise Of Bachelors POB-043


Everyone’s favourite old-time banjo experi- mentalist is back with his fourth solo album, following various adventures including a lengthy stint occupying the drum stool for Steve Gunn. This one’s actually almost a trio album, with Bowles joined on most tracks by double-bass player Casey Toll and drummer Rex McMurry.


The opener, Now If You Remember, is a lullaby written by a child for an adult. Hypnot- ically repeated phrases on layered pianos and banjos carry a softly crooned vocal: “Now, if you remember, we were talking about God and you…” Clocking in at almost eleven min- utes, The Road Reversed is the album’s centre- piece. Bowed bass and martial drums set the tone for an exhilarating pilgrimage toward an alternative reality in which Dave Brubeck’s Time Out was conceived in an Appalachian moonshine shack, rather than a New York recording studio. By contrast, Fresh & Fairly So and Elk River Blues (revisited from 2012 debut album A Bottle, A Buckeye) are breezy trio performances reminiscent of Bowles with The Black Twig Pickers, while the bowed banjo and cymbals of In Kind recall his intense, drone-based work in Pelt.


Solo banjo returns on Umbra and Stump


Sprout, and the mellowtone – a banjo/bouzouki hybrid instrument built by McMurry’s father – on the engaging Girih Tiles. A version of Ruby inspired by the deranged recording by Silver Apples on their Contact album is a personal joy.


Never the kind of musician to engage in showboating or self-aggrandisement, Nathan Bowles has taken another confident step for- ward with an album that combines simplicity and complexity in ways that repeatedly draw the listener back to it.


bowles.com Steve Hunt


IMAR Avalanche Big Mann BMANN003


This award-winning Glasgow-based quintet are: Mohsen Amini (concertina) from Glas- gow; Ryan Murphy (uilleann pipes, flute, whistle) from Cork, Ireland; Tomas Callister (fiddle) and Adam Rhodes (bouzouki) from the Isle of Man; and Adam Brown (bodhran, guitar) from Suffolk. They originally met as teenagers through Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eire- ann, the Irish traditional music network that tutors young musicians not just in Ireland but throughout the UK as well. Ímar’s second album, Avalanche, is almost entirely com- posed by the band, but you still feel its deep roots in traditional Irish musical sensibility.


At a time when fast-and-furious is fash- ionable, Ímar stand out. Even playing at breakneck speed, they retain a lightness of touch, fingertip control, and deep sensitivity to the supple interplay between the instru- ments. This album is further enriched by the plangent harmonies provided by guest musi- cians Donald Shaw (electric piano) and a string quartet led by Greg Lawson.


It’s hard to pick a favourite track. The


mighty Setanta is a spaghetti Western swag- ger of sultry bouzouki, wailing bluesy uil- leann pipes and fiery fiddle. The utterly exhil- arating Deep Blue has razor-sharp instrumen- tal playing in delicious cross-rhythms with breathtaking, turn-on-a-sixpence switches from tune to tune.


Nathan Bowles The slow pieces are equally good. Be


Thou is Ímar’s graceful arrangement of the Irish traditional tune Slane (to which the hymn Be Thou My Vision is sung). It opens with soulful fiddle leading the melody, which then moves to the uilleann pipes before pass- ing to bouzouki and acoustic guitar for the gentle, diminuendo concluding verse.


imarband.com Paul Matheson


GERRY O’CONNOR Last Night’s Joy Lughnasa Music LUGCD966


Gerry O’Connor, fiddle ace and long-time enthusiast of local music around his native Louth, has assimilated a large native reper- toire. From the bands La Lugh and Skylark his playing has been both virtuosic and distinctive, coming from a musical family bathed in fiddle music in Dundalk. His second solo album Last Night’s Joy again looks at his local repertoire with some American and Swedish additions. His playing is light in touch and nimble of fin- ger, especially on O’Reilly’s Greyhound accom- panied by Donal O’Connor’s subtle piano play- ing. Martin and Gerry O’Connor’s playing on The Hawk and The Hare, an Irish/Swedish crossover with a Skylark favourite The Hawk Jig (recorded by Sean McGuire on his Man of Achievement LP in 1975) and The Hardevert Polska mixes excitement and musical nous together while his namesake Gerry “Banjo” O’Connor joins him for a sprightly set of Amer- ican polkas Stereo Connor.


Eithne Ní Ulláchain’s memory and reper- toire are paid tribute to in Bádai Na Scadáin, a song she originally heard from her father Padraig and the air of the poignant Donegal lament for a father searching for his three sons in a boating tragedy near Inishfree Island. The reading here is suitably resigned yet possessing an inherent beauty under- scored by Neil Martin’s cello and Donal O’Connor’s piano. The variety of material and accompaniments allows for a subtle display of pyrotechnics and controlled emotional strength. This typifies the vitality and range on Last Night’s Joy which makes for joyful lis- tening anytime day or night.


gerryoconnor.net John O’Regan


DALINDA Dalinda Fonó FA 409-2


Three very fine Hungarian singers – Johan- na Orbán, Julianna Paár and Sára Tímár – evoke a complex and detailed world of female Carpathian community. Through intimate and sometimes agonising human interaction, and in a richly symbolic charting of the seasons and traditions, a hermetically sealed polyphonic miniature of locales is glimpsed. It’s a difficult, uncompromising and revelatory listen.


Material has been collected from across


Hungary’s different dialects and regions, fil- tered through individual experience, and then lived through and sung with a studied vehemence that is both credible and authen- tic. Traditional song is detailed through the stricter techniques of polyphonic singing, as the trio weave a cloak of familiarity, dis- parate backgrounds and melodic differences, while sources are layered and rehearsed down to the simplest but most telling of details, real lives and universalities.


The trio first met, inevitably, at the Fer- enc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, and the unobtrusive but essential academic underpin- ning to this project is one of its many delights. This is a record so creatively detailed that it repays repeated rapt listening and wondering, and is certainly influenced by Kodály’s assertions that the very variation in surviving traditional music can itself be a vital source in any further “authentic performance of notated musical memory”.


The tradition is passed on, in vocal


polyphony’s ability to express countless moods and enrich old songs with new possi- bilities. Hajnal Hasad, for example, even dares to waver off balance, as intensity and weight offset lighter moments, diving and soaring within single panoramic breaths and outspoken deep pulses.


The trio have created an album that is both traumatic elegy and playfulness. The end result is more immediately pressing than the famous and infamous fairly recent recordings of vocal tradition from nearby Bul- garia, and is just as alluring and substantial in its own quieter truths.


fono.hu John Pheby


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