The Irish Post

This latest release from Donegal trad stars Altan was recorded in Nashville with several guests from the Americana music world.

The result is a really nicely balanced album featuring 14 tracks where Co. Donegal meets the parts of 13 states that make up Appalachia — musically speaking.

Altan have been together for almost 35 years and the time was right to explore beyond the pure Irish traditional boundaries. They have managed to do this quite skillfully — due in no small part to the production skills of Gary West — while retaining the core sound that is their trademark.

The fusion of Irish and Appalachian with talented guests such as Americans Jerry Douglas, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tim O’Brien, Bruce Molsky and Glasgow’s Eddi Reader among others combine to produce an album of pure quality.

The Widening Gyre (the title is taken from W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming) shows the connection between Celtic and bluegrass music with both genres benefitting from the natural alliance.

A great album from a great band who will be touring Britain in May.

— Joe Giltrap, The Irish Post.

The Arts Desk

Taking its title from the opening line of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming, this new album from legendary traditional Irish band Altan sees them decamp to Nashville for an imaginative, celebratory exploration of the links between traditional Irish and American roots music. It also allows them to collaborate with many of the musical friends they’ve made along their 30-plus years journey.

Listeners looking for the uniquely driving tune sets that Altan are famous for have plenty to get their teeth into, not least “Buffalo Gals/Leather Britches/Leslie’s Reel”, which includes a bracing gear change from the old-timey opening tune to the two reels that follow, courtesy of some nifty five-string banjo from Alison Brown. Switching between D and A major, the last tune of guitarist Mark Kelly’s jig set, “The Gravediggers”, is a particular delight, channelling that kind of joyous quality that Altan can seemingly tap into at will. Fiddle player Ciaran Tourish keeps the revelry going with “The Triple T” which features some lovely, fluid dobro work from Jerry Douglas.

Captivating quieter moments include the slow reel “Samhradh”, penned by Altan’s founder, fiddle player and vocalist Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, guitarist Dáithí Sproule’s gorgeous “A Tune for Mairéad and Anna Ní Mhaonaigh”, plus the bittersweet “The Road Home” by new recruit, piano accordion player Martin Tourish.

Thanks to Ní Mhaonaigh’s indescribably beautiful voice, songs occupy a special place on any Altan album, and The Widening Gyre is an absolute treasure trove, from the old-timey waltz “No Ash Will Burn” (a duet with Bruce Molsky) to the stunning arrangement of “Má Théann Tú ‘un Aonaigh”. Mary Chapin Carpenter joins Ní Mhaonaigh on a heart-melting duet, “White Birds”, while the use of John Doherty’s reel as an instrumental interlude in “The House Carpenter (Gypsy Davy)” is a lovely nod to one of the band’s most important touchstones.

In addition to the crystalline beauty of “Cúirt Robin Finley” and “Lurgy Streams”, Ní Mhaonaigh’s soaring, soul-stirring vocals on “Far Beyond Carrickfinn”, with the subtlest backing vocals from Eddie Reader, is one of the most touching things you’ll hear this year.

— Peter Quinn, The Arts Desk

Irish Music Magazine

I first heard this Donegal piano accordionist on a very fine duo recording with Luke Ward on bouzouki, totally trad with a couple of forays beyond the Donegal fiddle repertoire. Under a Red Sky Night is completely different. All but one track here is composed by Martin, and arranged for a diverse range of instruments amounting to a folk-flavoured chamber orchestra. Starting with a magnificent Spanish-inspired medley, Martin’s music moves between his native Donegal and other Celtic traditions, as well as drawing on more contemporary styles. Imagined Cummunities opens with an archive recording of legendary travelling fiddler John Doherty, and weaves this into an anthem for culture and community which embraces much more than Irish music. Moment Music is an improvisation which reminds me of the connection between Donegal and Scottish fiddle music, a link to the playing of Aly Bain, Phil Cunningham, Duncan Chisholm and the like. The next two tracks spring from traditional Donegal melodies, Bog an Lochan and a polka from the 19th century James Tourish manuscript collection. Martin transforms them both into powerful ensemble pieces, one fast, one slow.

That single traditional track also comes from the James Tourish collection. Today’s Tourish takes a composition by another great stomach Steinway artist, Alan Kelly’s polka Trip to Dingle, and slows it down to a swaggering march before launching into two polkas from this old manuscript, in a medley with all the punch and panache of the best modern Irish dance music. The beautiful sweet Liobhan Song, the gentle Lullaby and the final Horseman, Pass By all rely on the expressiveness of the solo accordion in a master’s hands here. The spooky Agnis Tompson’s Final Dance and The West Gates set the accordion against complex arrangements of strings, vocals, brass and woodwind, to tell stories of Scottish witches and Donegal fiddlers – not such unlikely bedfellows. The latter is a set of reels which could easily become traditional. Which only leaves The Missed Step, an accordion showpiece that would make a fitting finale for any CD. Although there are many performers on this album, Under a Red Sky Night is one of those rare recordings where the composition, arrangement and performance is largely down to a single musician: this is Martrin Tourish’s music, and I’d say it will make him a lot of friends at home and abroad.

— Alex Monaghan, Irish Music Magazine.

Celtic Music Fan

Martin Tourish is back with an album that promises to enchant and enrich the soul with historical content in twelve artfully crafted tracks.

I compare the experience to watching a UFO land. The beautiful album cover alone (orange, red , black and a bird silhouette ) is telling. Under a Red Night Sky also presents the involvement of Tim Edey and the technical talent of Alexis Nealon who engineered and mastered this superb recording. I checked out the list of artists in the liner notes and I give it a two thumbs up. Or even three.

It’s an eclectic mix of traditional melodies, classical influences and samples from music archives that showcase the stories behind the tunes. In my dark bedroom, it seems as if the ceiling opens up to reveal a wild, fantastic and beautifully scary world that is inhabited by primal emotions. This album is very visual.

It is easy to get lost in the beautiful music of Martin Tourish whom I wrote about more than a year ago, highlighting his achievements (being able to perform with legendary personalities including NASA astronaut Cady Coleman). Under a Red Night Sky is a testament to his sophisticated command of technique and composition.

It is hard to choose my favorite tracks out of the twelve because, each tune has its story to tell. Variation on a Theme from a James Tourish Collection (track 6) is a favorite due to its emphasis on nuance and atmosphere. I also love Imagined Communities because it features  John Doherty’s voice which enhances the ambience. The other stand out track for me is Horseman, Pass By. It is the last track in the album. Being alone in the dark and listening to this gives me goosebumps. You know what they say about the curtain between the physical world and the unseen becomes thin- it’s exactly the feeling I have.

Under a Red Night Sky plays like a good fantasy/historical/sci-fi novel. You don’t want to miss a chapter. All the meticulous love for detail of talents involved in the making of this album are evident as you listen again and again. It is something you can listen to ten years from now and realize how timeless and beautiful it is.

— Baxtor Labados, The Celtic Music Fan

Trad Review

‘a seemingly ancient sound out of instrumentation that is anything but ancient.
There is something so powerful and so original about the music on this 2012 album from Deep End of the Ford, I can’t resist saying that I am just very happy that I have it and that I am disposed to love it.

The musicians are Lorcán MacMathúna on vocals, Seán MacErlaine on bass clarinet, Martin Tourish on piano accordion, Eoghan Neff on fiddle, and Flaithrí Neff on uileann pipes, vpipes and low whistles. I think they were possibly all involved in effects and  electronics of one sort or another.

The Táin story itself and the music in this telling evoke “a Celtic warrior society and an epic campaign which revolves around two of the most enigmatic and powerful characters in Irish mythology”, and so the challenge is to make the music live up to that, and to the fact that this is one of the most “iconic” works of literature in our culture.

Understandably, the music here ends up being generally quite rugged, “masculine”(for want of a better description and ironically considering the key protagonist is female), though the voice and some of the instrumental lines are also suitably gentle at times. It often pulses and drives on with the rhythm, but includes passages of almost a-rhythmic improvisation and other more sophisticated digitally enhanced sections, as well as haunting and often beautiful melodies played at times in styles that produce those microtonal effects and overtones that contribute to an almost “lived” sense of the epic and supernatural occurrences being described.

The lyrics were taken unaltered from the mediaeval Irish manuscript, The Book of Leinster, and are sung in Old-Irish. All the core music was composed by Mac Mathúna, with “the vocal line [required by the text] providing the main melodic drive”, and then improvisation being used to build up around that.

There are lyrical moments in the epic-ness but mostly it is quite dramatic, both in how the instruments are played: episodically and shifting around, as tools to lay down the drama rather than smoothly in the tune-delivering way we are more used to in traditional music; and in how Mac Mathúna’s voice is used: also as a tool to serve the story, sometimes narratively neutral while at other times he acts out emotions and parts when the particular passage requires it (especially in the second part of ‘The Sorcerous Distortions’).

There are ten tracks on the album, labelled movements, each one derived from particular passages in the original narrative.

1. The Pillow Talk tells of how Meadhbh sets the drama going when she decides she must top her husband Ailill’s wealth at any cost, reflected in ominous and disturbed melodic fragments and thrusting rhythms
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2. The Prophesy of Fidelm foretells the coming of Cú Chullain: “He will lay low your entire army, and he will slaughter you in dense crowds,” the prophetess declares in a melancholy, at times foreboding voice underlayed by acoustic hints of nature twisting and distorting
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3. The slighting of Cú Chulainn tells, through a shimmering, echoing soundscape, of the insulting terms Meadhbh offers Cú Chulainn when she sees the devastation wrought by him
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4. Cú Chulainn’s sleep, evoked in a continuous drone on the pipes, is a lyrical monologue of injury, pain, and sorrow: “A drop of blood drips from my weapon. I am sorely wounded. No friend comes to me in alliance or help …”, dreamily relieved by a sweet melody on Neff’s pipes accompanied by strummed fiddle, which however dips at the very end into dissonant chords
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5. The Sorcerous Distortions starts with a short instrumental passage (accordion and grinding fiddle) evoking the transformation of Cú Chulainn, when he hears of the death of the Ulster youths who alone came to his aid, into “the distorted one”, and proceeds into a chant-like verse-account of his indiscriminate slaughtering of all around him – Mac Mathúna building his theatrical delivery into an urgent incantation with a second vocal harmony track: very powerful stuff, but kept under control to the point of almost being too short
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6. Dinnseanchas is a rousing march tune dedicated to the lore of the places itself, played on the box and fiddle
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7. The manipulation of Ferdia is the most manipulated of the tracks soundwise. There’s a demon in the background, brilliantly created through some kind of electronic trickery, and Mac Erlaine improvises against Mac Mathúna’s relatively straight-forward telling of Meadhbh’s calculated inveigling of Ferdia, Cú Chulainn’s foster brother, into attacking her foe
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8. Caoineadh Fherdia is a grim lament delivered over Mac Erlaine’s troubled bass clarinet, a voice of regret echoing out across ages as if to be picked up in the very character of sound of the uileann pipes towards the end.

9. The cries of Sualtaim’s head (Scread Ceann Sualtaim) tells of Cú Chullain’s father’s ride to get help being turned into a hideously supernatural call to arms, as “Sualtaim’s own shield turned on Sualtaim and its rim cut off his head … [which then] spoke the same words: Men are slain, women carried off, cattle driven away, O Ulstermen …” The music here is freer and looser and roaming and quite wild at moments, and Mac Mathuna revels in the vocal syncopation possibilities offered by the crisp verbal phrases and the chopped fiddle strumming and plucking.

10. The Rut and Carnage – as the bulls meet and attack and destroy each other (though not before Donn Cúailnge “attacked the women and boys and children of the territory of Cúailnge and inflicted great slaughter on them”) – is a sad laying out in song and music of the miserable consequences of war.

With so few and such young musicians involved, it is a wonder that an epic feel of this magnitude could have been created by these guys, but it has. There is a lot demanded of the vocals in the relatively sparse instrumentation but Mac Mathuna delivers practically right the way through. As do the musicians both in terms of playing and imaginatively creating the soundscape for the drama (– though it’s not always just the “set” that the instruments evoke; they sometimes provide or pick up the main drama themselves and indeed the protagonists). It is a very visual, cinematic experience to listen to the entire album, though it is only (by necessity) partially told and at times, like the original itself, heavy going. But, fair play to Mac Mathúna and the others, many of the tracks are so beautiful they can easily be played independently of the rest, and it’s a real shame, therefore, we don’t hear them on Lyric and elsewhere at all these days.

GOTTA GET IT (ONE OF A KIND).

Paul O’Connor, The Trad Review

The Living Tradition

You may as well take your socks off before you listen to this, ’cause they ain’t gonna be on by the time it’s over. Mine were blown off by Trippin’, a pair of splendid reels taken to the cleaners by Martin’s piano box and Luke’s bouzouki. These boys step smartly from the Ulster sound of The Green Fields of Antrim and Dinny McLoughlin’s Fairies of Balmagan to a set of jigs with an Asturian feel, to slow airs, and back again. Compositions by Martin account for maybe two thirds of the melodies here, with a few other contemporary tunes and a handful of traditional favourites. The power of the Donegal fiddle heritage comes through strongly on most tracks, and Ciaran Tourish joins the duo for a few sets. The family background is responsible for several tune titles, including Granny Tourish’s Reel written by Martin, and Francie Tourish’s attributed to a recent ancestor.

The Fortune Teller is a powerful set, a pair of Highlands from Martin’s pen: they could take a bit more snap, but they’re both fine punchy tunes. Bushfire Dreaming is more delicate, a lovely Highland learnt from box-player Máirtin Wilson, followed by three intricate wee reels. The slow air Caonadh Ár Cultúr is a tour de force, a lament by Martin to mark the clamp down on underage musicians in pubs, obviously a terrible loss, evocative and chilling on full-power accordion.

One or two tracks are a little shaky, reminders that this is a debut album, but the majority are rock solid. Stage Fright is ironically one of the most assured, another masterful air and a couple of jigs ending with the Asturian classic Muñeira de Casu. Piper in the Cave and Cavan Cowboys are equally accomplished, tasty tunes and a steady beat for the step-dancers who add their touch. Luke’s solo on Leanbh Mo Chroí is well taken, and Skitatoes forms a suitable finale for this most promising and captivating CD.

— Alex Monaghan, The Living Tradition.

The Irish Echo

What a pleasant surprise this CD was when it arrived unannounced. Tourish on accordion and Ward on bouzouki bring youthful vigor, joyful virtuosity, and bracing boldness to the musical tradition in and around Ardara, Donegal.

— Earle Hitchner, The Irish Echo

Songlines

If one of the names seems familiar to followers of Irish music, indeed accordionist Martin Tourish is related to Altan’s Ciarán of that ilk and, like his better known uncle, also hails from Donegal, though in this case it’s the town of Ballybofey. Though himself born in Cavan, bouzouki player Luke Ward’s father also came from Ballybofey, and unsurprisingly this sparkling debut album draws many of its influences from the northwest of Ireland, not least in the shape of the Donegal fiddle tradition.

Effervescent and musically adroit musicianship thoroughly characterizes Clan Ranald and Martin’s playing of the piano accordion, as opposed to the more commonly occurring button variety, will provide one in the eye for those who feel the instrument is unsuited to traditional music. Luke too offers a distinctive subtlety in his accompaniment, while the judicious employment of Stiofán Ó Brion’s bodhrán and Terry McGinty’s bass on selected tracks adds further depth.

Then there’s uncle Ciarán himself who appears for an inspiring set of tunes aptly entitled ‘The Tourish Set’, particularly as one of the melodies derives from another family member, Francie, and the others derive from the pens of Ciarán and Martin. Guitarist Steve Cooney also pops up for the breezy Ardara Sessions, while Martin’s compositional skills are further to the fore on the delightful ‘The Fortune Teller’ and there’s even time for a couple of step dancers to strut their stuff on Skitatoes.

All told, Clan Ranald is enjoyment personified and marks Messrs. Tourish and Ward as two of Ireland’s brightest musical talents.

— Geoff Wallis, Songlines