Every week Ilona gives me an update of the music that she has added to the CeltCast radio stream, and every week I listen to what’s new, and which records I personally would love to put a spotlight on. It only took a few seconds of listening to the opening track Old Climbing Tree of
Rachel Croft’s
debut CD Hours Awake for me to decide that yes, this most definitely will be on the review list. What an A-MA-ZING voice. What a song. I simply love it!! That was the easy part, but then came the harder bit: writing a review.
And so the adventure started. First listening to the album a couple of times, having a look at the booklet for some more info, and last but not least going to Rachel’s website for the last details that I needed to write a nice introduction – or so I thought. Because if you really want to write something about Rachel Croft’s background you have to dig deep. I found no biography, no interview, no Wikipedia entry, nothing. It didn’t matter which angle I tried, I drew a blank. Until I desperately started searching for videos I could use on YouTube. That’s where I finally managed to puzzle a wee bit of her story together. With a big thank you to early fan Martin Waring, who recorded several of the earliest performances that Rachel did in her hometown of York.
As far as I have been able to find out, Rachel Croft is a young singer-songwriter from York. She started her career in her hometown doing open mic performances, gigs in local establishments, in the University of York – where she also studied- and busking on the streets of her hometown. It was in 2014 that Martin Waring, a local photographer, spotted Rachel performing in the streets of York, something he had hoped for after seeing her at an open mic performance. And he recorded her playing the song Songbird, a cover of American blues and jazz singer
Eva Cassidy.
Rachel Croft performing Songbird in York, 2014. Recorded by Martin Waring
In the following year he kept track of her and recorded some lovely street performances of her doing classic pop songs such as
John Lennon’sImagine,
Sting’sFields of Gold,
Taylor Swift’sDear John and a really powerful version of
Sam Smith’s Stay With Me. But she also sings a beautiful version of
Mary Black’s
folk anthem Song for Ireland and the Irish classic The Fields of Athenry. In a studio performance she did for the
Pear Tree Sessions
in 2015 she also recorded two folk classics: The Fields of Athenry again and also The Wild Mountain Thyme. Look them up, they are stunning performances.
In 2016 videos of Rachel’s singer-songwriter street performances kept popping up on YouTube, but also a video of
The Croft Mullen Band,
where she is performing theDuke Ellington
classic It Don’t Mean a Thing together with pianist
Karl Mullen
: a jazzy song she also nails!
In November 2017 Rachel’s very first single, Only Dreams (a song that luckily also found its way on Hours Awake) came out. She wrote it herself and recorded it with the help of Rachel Brown on cello, Emlyn Vaughan on double bass, bandmate Karl Mullen on piano and synth and
Dan Webster
on electric guitar. The latter also responsible for recording, mixing and co-producing it. (Most of them also helped out recording Hours Awake, but I’m getting ahead of myself now.)
Only Dreams is a stunning, stunning song, that takes the best of her pop, singer-songwriter and jazz background. It is a beautiful guitar ballad. It reminds me of
Chris Isaac’sWicked Games, also a fragile yet powerful ballad.
When you only listen to the melody and instruments, Only Dreams is already beautiful, the subtle cello, piano and keys with over it this deep-cutting, soul-jerking, yet still fragile slide guitar notes. But the biggest selling point of Only Dreams is Rachel’s voice. Her vocals are stunning. Plain and simple! Her voice is deep, rich, oozing with soul, and she has perfect control over it. It is hard to describe her voice. Take the deep, rich sound of
Vaya Con Dios‘
Dani Klein, the soul voice of
Joss Stone,
the singer-songwriter qualities of the early
Adele
(at the time of her debut 19) and the rich seventies feel of 70’s stars like
Karen Carpenter or
Helen ‘I am Woman’ Reddy.
Then YouTube went quiet, so I had to go on Facebook. In December 2017 Rachel announced that she had started recording new material with Dan Webster for a full-length album. 95% made possible through crowdfunding, according to a grateful Rachel in the booklet of Hours Awake.
On January 8th, 2018, she performed on BBC Radio York in the Introduction Show hosted by Jericho Keys, and in November 2018 she toured The Netherlands for the first time – and if I’m not mistaken that could well have been her first tour outside of Britain.
In February of 2019, Hours Awake finally came out. This was followed by more and more performances in AND outside of Great Britain. One of them was another short tour in The Netherlands that also brought her to
Elfia Arcen
on September the 22nd, where Ilona and Alex saw her perform falling in love with her music on the spot. A love they happily passed on to me, hence this review.
Hours Awake, a wonderful album
It is not hard to fall in love with Rachel’s music, though. As I said, it already starts with the first notes of Old Climbing Tree.
A deep and powerful string intro makes this song come closest to the music we normally play at CeltCast. Together with the tribal drums, it could be the intro to a
Cesair
song if it wasn’t for those warm soulful vocals of Rachel coming in, somewhere between Joss Stone, Dani Klein and
Tanita Tikaram.
Old Climbing Tree is the most Celtic of the songs on Hours Awake: most of the songs hover somewhere between singer-songwriter material, American folk and the contemporary pop music made by artists like Adele – they are jazzy, deeply rooted in musical history, and yet sound modern, contemporary.
It is almost impossible to name one highlight. Hear Me, the 70’s style In Blue or Rainier Day, the jazzy Don’t Feel like Holding On with its lovely violin melody weaving through it, 6,000 miles, they are all equally beautiful singer-songwriter ballads.
If I had to choose my favourites I would pick Can’t Replace Your Perfect, a soulful gospel ballad that wouldn’t look out of place on a Joss Stone or a Croft Mullen band album (yes, Rachel and Karl Mullen still perform together), the powerful opener Old Climbing Tree and of course the wonderful first single Only Dreams. Rachel is on her very VERY best in that song, with a voice so rich and warm that it is capable of melting the chocolate ice cream in your refrigerator.
This young lady has a great career ahead of her. Trust me, in a few year’s time she will be huge, so go see her next time she is performing at Elfia, you won’t regret it. Not at all!
– Cliff
Editor: Iris de Wolf
sleeve art: D. Somme
picture: Rachel Croft
Video of Songbird posted with kind permission of Martin Waring
Priscilla Hernandez – The Underliving (2011) review
15Mar
celtadmin
0 Comments
I usually don’t start a review talking about the artwork of it, but in the case of
Priscilla Hernandez’s
second album, The Underliving it is the only obvious thing to do. The fantasy folk scene is known for the beautiful artwork with one being even more stunning than the other. You probably remember the beautiful booklet that covers Mythos, the second
Waldkauz
album, or the equally impressive booklet accompanying Eden, that famous concept album
Faun
released in 2011, The double-sided picture book illustrating the Riven double CD by
Jyoti Verhoeff
is another example, not to mention the illustrated fairy tale that was added to
Omnia‘s
Pagan Folk Lore DVD. Well, I can tell you that the casing that Priscilla Hernandez designed for her The Underliving album can hold its own with all the aforementioned books.
Not only is it 3 centimetrers longer than a normal CD casing, it also filled with lovely fantasy drawings in Priscilla’s own slightly eerie, slightly gothic, slightly fairy tale style. Blended between them are photographs edited and coloured in the same blue-greyish hue as the drawings that fit the theme of The Underliving so well.
Priscilla Hernandez is not only a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer AND poet, she is also an illustrator and writer. On her
website,
she tells us that even before she started making music at a young age, she was already making drawings to illustrate her own stories.
One of those stories is an unpublished graphic comic called
Yidneth.
Yidneth started as a horror/fantasy novel that Priscilla then illustrated to turn into a comic.
– “It consists of a 74 coloured page gothic-fantasy comic graphic novel I scripted when a child and that took shape as a graphic novel done through the ’80s until ’90s.’ Priscilla tells us on her webpage. On the fact that it was never published she says the following:
– “Yidneth is my trademark and the name of my company and record label but also name that I invented for my personal project, and not my artistic name (though after using it so long it’s almost like my alter-ego). When I was younger I was more focused in my works as an illustrator and then somehow music got more successful and carried away some of my projects that remained then on hold.”
Parts of that artwork did make it into her CD booklets though, and also songs like Ancient Shadows or Lament, found on Priscilla’s first album Ancient Shadows – the Ghost and the Fairy, are directly inspired by pages of that unpublished Yidneth story.
The Underliving is one of the worlds Priscilla created in her novel. To quote her again: -‘The Underliving is a world of reveries in the mist, lost veiled memories concealed in an alluring grey and white realm….
…Dormant in the corner of your eyes, always there but hidden from your sight, The underliving creatures sway over the living without our awareness. They observe us. They play with us. They inspire us…. … The album portrays the story of a chosen child that can perceive this “Otherworld” and longs to be part of it.’
So that’s the story behind The Underliving and that’s also the reason why I hope modern song downloads and Spotify will never fully replace a CD. Especially in our scene the music (almost) always has a story, a reason why it is made. And the artwork made for those albums reflects that. They are not random pictures, but an intricate part of the whole theme a musician wants to express. With us buying complete albums we keep that alive. And by diving into the artwork we also come so much closer to the essence of the music we are hearing. We understand more why it is created, what it means to the one creating it, what the artist wanted to say to us. In my eyes, The Underliving‘s artwork conclusively proves that point.
OK, it’s time to climb off my soapbox and finally get that CD in my Discman. From the first notes of In The Mist you notice the beautiful cello melody played by
Biel Fiol and
Svetlana Tovstukha
Both part of Priscilla’s band at the time,
(rightside photo) giving the ambient/new age music a more earthy feel than I knew from Ancient Shadows. More classical. The beat under it is also different, less triphop, more pagan folk. As this delicate new age ballad develops into a full song it’s an orchestra I hear, not a keyboard generated sound. That may be the biggest difference between Ancient Shadows and The Underliving. Where on Ancient Shadows Priscilla ‘only’played piano and keyboards, on The Underliving she also plays harp, mountain-, baritone-, and hammered dulcimer, psaltery, Koshi chimes, kantele, jouhikko, double ocarina, glass harp, singing bowls, flute, Irish tin- and low whistle, bansuri, and chalumeau. It’s mesmerizing only reading the list. It makes the music much richer, much fuller, quite different from the keyboard sound of Ancient Shadows.
The rich earthy sound continues with the cello in the title song The Underliving. Strong strokes straight away pull you into the song and Priscilla’s opening vocals captivate you even more. With the power of the cello, I have to think of an ambient version of
Amy Lee
(Evanescence)
straight away, but Priscilla has her own style of singing, dreamy, warm and soothing, but also sharp and eerie when needed.
When I hear the electric guitar creeping in towards the end, I’m even more convinced Priscilla is the ambient/new age sister of Amy Lee, or of a young
Sharon den Adel
(Within Temptation),
or should I say all three are the adopted daughters of that most famous fantasy pop singer of all:
Kate Bush.
It’s all concealed in the mists of time I guess.
Talking of Kate: Feel the Thrill is the first song with the ambient pop feel that I know from Ancient Shadows. Where the previous song The Underliving is more a classical, acoustic version of a gothic rock song, Feel The Thrill takes me back to
Madonna‘s
Frozen. The keyboard sound underneath it takes me even further back, all the way to the ’80s and the synthpop sound of bands like Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. It’s also a really catchy song, and could have been an instant hit if it had been picked up by radio stations.
It sounds like a mellow, ambient version of
Robert Miles
music actually. The same goes for Through The Long way. If you’re into ambient fantasy music, this album is definitely for you. Good beat, beautiful orchestral arrangements, a catchy melody, and Priscilla’s beautiful vocals, you don’t need much more than this.
The cool thing with Priscilla’s music is that she doesn’t believe in the boundaries of a style. She just wants to make beautiful dreamscape type music and will add whatever instrument or influence needed, as is clear from the list of instruments featured on this album. So at one moment, I hear a tune or a cello reminding me of
Sophie Zaaijer
and
Cesair,
the next moment I’m thinking
Dark Crystal, the original movie soundtrack
and seconds after that I’m rushing to get
Jyoti Verhoeff‘s
Bare EP out. For me that is the power of Priscilla’s music, it is pure and genuine, and as you probably have gathered by now, I find it extremely beautiful.
The dreamy, slightly eerie In My Mind’s Eye, the spooky piano ballad Off The Lane, the Native American/Cesair-like pagan folk song Northern Lights, the piano/string ballad Morning light or the stunning ballad At the Dream’s Door, the experimental pop-art of The Aftermath, they are all equally beautiful.
My personal, favourite part of the cd is not one song, but the sequence of The Wind Song and Ode To The silence following each other. Both strong pop-art songs they are just arranged masterfully together, combining the best bits of Jyoti Verhoeff, or an acoustic Within Temptation together.
Somehow I constantly come up with these gothic rock/female-fronted metal comparisons although I actually don’t want to. I know it would mislead you, reader, into thinking this is a rock CD, but it most definitely is not! Although it also isn’t a sugar-coated new age/ambient/fairy record. It just happens that Priscilla’s singing style, in its lyrics and the wat she performs them, how she plays with the melody lines, reminds me of singers like Amy Lee. A thing Priscilla herself also mentioned in a note she wrote to me while we were discussing the details around these reviews. Priscilla has her own unique style. Something that hovers somewhere between new age music, ambient dance, pagan folk, and gothic fantasy.
Something else also becomes very clear as you wander deeper into the music and artwork of The Underliving, this is a really, really personal CD.
Yidneth may not be Priscilla’s alter Ego, but it surely is an integrated part of her being. Yidneth is Priscilla’s gateway into the dream world she herself has created. It is also the gateway she needed to get to terms with her childhood’s sleep paralysis and nightmare experiences. It’s those lyrics that keep pushing me towards those gothic references. They are not sweet and sugarcoated, they are deep, fairytale-like but with those dark shadows that make movies like Underworld and The Dark Crystal so beautiful. It’s also the lyrics that make the music of bands like Evanescence, Within Temptation or Leave’s Eyes so powerful. Priscilla’s music lives there, right on the edge of acoustic gothic music and ambient dance. Unique and beautiful.
I’ve talked long enough, put this record in your CD player, put on your headphones and close your eyes. Start dreaming. See that small child waiting in the shadows? Don’t be afraid. Grab her hand and let her lead you into the beautiful world of The Underliving. The world of Yidneth.
– Cliff-
Editor: Sara Weeda
Sleeve art: Priscilla Hernandez/Yidneth
Art & Photo’s: Priscilla Hernandez/Yidneth
Vilsevind – Dag O Natt (2019) Review
18Feb
celtadmin
0 Comments
At CeltCast we don’t often get post from South America. And if that envelope then also includes a Swedish folk CD, you can imagine the music team got a lot more than just interested. We were actually intrigued. The CD we got is called Dag O Natt, and the duo who sent it to us has the typical Argentine name of
Vilsevind.
A quick look at their Facebook page tells us a bit more:
-‘Vilsevind -Swedish for “wandering wind- is a Swedish-Argentine duo made up of spouses Sergio and Johanna Ribnikov Gunnarsson. As sound travels farther on water, their musical style can be described as North Sea music, a crossover between Nordic Folk and Celtic Music. Their main source of inspiration is Nordic history and folk life, superstitions and folklore and nature, especially that of the island of Öland, Johanna’s birthplace.’
And so I ended up with a North Sea folk album all the way from South America on my review desk. And I can already reveal, I am not complaining.
So Vilsevind is Swedish-born Johanna Ribnikov Gunnarsson on vocals and concertina, and Argentine-born Sergio Ribnikov Gunnarsson on vocals, Irish bouzouki, guitar, mandolin, hurdy gurdy, jaw harp and offerdalspipa (A Swedish flute based on a flute from the museum of the Offerdal Heritage Centre. It was bequeathed to the Heritage Centre in the 1960s by a man from Fiskviken, a village in the borough of Krokom.) Already an impressive list of instruments.
But the couple didn’t record Dag O Natt as a pure duo, not at all, it was a huge project with as much as twelve guest musicians involved, playing percussion, guitars, a Galician bagpipe, a Cretan Lyra, Strings and Irish whistles.
Vilsevind themselves already said that they play North Sea music, and from the first notes of Ingång: Dag you can hear this is more than just Swedish folk. This first song actually sounds more like film music with added sound effects. It sounds like a small vessel on the North Sea is washed ashore by the tides of time. In it are two musicians who wake up to tell their tale. I love the cello setting the tone in this song.
Ingång: Dag is followed by the upbeat song Fuego. Fuego is cool mix of folk influences. Think of a mix of the cabaresque sound of
Twigs and Twine,
the Swedish folk of
Asynje
and a touch of medieval bagpipe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6akBxLpVgpM
The third song, Ödeblues, reminds me even more of Twigs & Twine. Not only in the way the music is arranged -a cabaresque, upbeat ballad that ends up as an acoustic power-ballad- but also in the vocals. Johanna has a pleasant voice that reminds me very much of Lian’s, one of Twigs & Twine’s female vocalists. Sergio has a nice warm voice that complements Johanna’s voice perfectly. As a singing duo their voices work very well together. During Ödeblues the different percussion and Irish bouzouki players join in. Where in Dag you could still say you are listening to a duo, during Fuego and especially Ödeblues it is clear that Vilsevind went for a full band sound. All in all Ingång: Dag, Fuego, and Ödeblues are a very pleasant start to this CD, that up to now is indeed more general Celtic sounding than pure Swedish.
Flat White/Elfshot is an instrumental song that starts as an instrumental Swedish folk ballad with Flat White, with a high pitched string- and tin whistle melody in it, that gives it an ever so slight Japanese/Chinese feel (to my ears at least.) I don’t think it is deliberate, but once I heard it I couldn’t get the comparison out of your mind anymore. What IS intended, is that the song is a lovely Celtic instrumental ballad that suddenly jumps to an Irish up-tempo dance song. And jump is the right word here. It really jumps from a ballad into a cheerful upbeat dance song, including an extremely cool jaw harp rhythm, bound to put a huge smile on your face (As will the story behind this song. Read it, you will laugh your a** off) A lovely musical surprise and this will not be the last surprising twist on Dag O Natt.
Thorsten Fiskare is a nice ballad based on a work by the Ölandic poet and playwright
Erik Johan Stagnelius.
Most of the songs, written by Sergio, Johanna or both of them together are in Swedish. The only two exceptions are Oración and Kalabalik which are sung in Spanish, the latter by Sergio. As far as I can tell from Google Translate (which had a looooot of trouble trying to translate the Swedish poetic lyrics into proper Dutch) all the songs are island folk poems, telling about universal themes as love, longing, loss, myth, and… wait for it… Coffee! For those who master Spanish, they can read all about the background of the songs on Vilsevind’s webpage. For those non-Spanish speaking readers, try translating the synopsis in Google Translate, that works much better. (Or you can use the link the band provided.
shorturl.at/lmMO5)
Coming back to Thorsten Fiskare, it is definitely one of my favourite songs on Dag O Natt. A lovely ballad to start with, The voices of Johanna and Sergio blend beautifully with the Irish bouzouki, and it would not be a Vilsevind song if the music didn’t change halfway through. In this case, you get the feeling
Trolska Polska
entered the studio to join in for a bit. Totally fitting for the story Vilsevind are telling in Thorsten Fiskare. Majsol is the loveliest of the ballads on Dag O Natt. A beautiful duet between Irish bouzouki and voice. There are moments at the start where I mistake Sergio’s bouzouki for a harp. Just stunning. The violin and concertina gliding into the sound at the end or the staccato string section after that are just the icing on an already beautiful cake. I have to compliment
Manuel Villar Lifac
on his string arrangements throughout the album, and also
Marcelo Ismael Rodriguez
who recorded, mixed and mastered Dag o Natt to an outstanding quality. I love all the bits and pieces added to the music to make it interesting. Well done!
By now we are nearing the end of the album. Virvelsinn is the song the duo wrote to give the name Vilsevind and everything it stands for its own voice. And indeed it represents the band perfectly. Virvelsinn is a celebration of poetic, European folk music. It feels like Johanna has taken the memories of her musical heritage and, together with the love of her life, and the new friends she gained, she plays it in a new land, both to cherish those memories and to give the music as a gift to the people in a new land she clearly loves too.
Kalabalik is one of the two songs in Spanish and the only one with Sergio on lead vocals, but don’t expect it to sound Argentinian at all. It’s a wonderful blend of Irish folk and Swedish traditional music in the Spanish tongue, admittedly with a bit of accordion that takes me to the lovely Celtic folk made in Brittany, as
Wouter & de Draak
would play it. And in that way Vilsevind keeps mixing the best bits of the western European folk music together. And Vilsevind has yet more tricks up their sleeve, how about an Indian sitar blended into Swedish folk for instance? In Vilsevinds musical world, not a problem. Another example is the lovely folk-pop flute melody in Tusentals Färdas, a song that could easily have been on
Gwendolyn Snowdon’s
latest solo album too.
And that sums up Vilsevinds music. Its positive happy music, made with a big wink and a huge smile. Dag o Natt is indeed what Sergio and Johanna claim it is on their website: “A celebration of Swedish and Celtic folk music combined.” A celebration that I hope to hear a lot more of in the future. The world can use more musical smiles like this. A lot more, actually!
– Cliff
Editor: Sara Weeda,
Sleeve art: Sandra Núnez Castro,
Pictures: Vilsevind
Trobar de Morte – Witchcraft (2018) review
15Feb
celtadmin
0 Comments
I grew up in the 1980s and New Wave bands/synth-pop bands like
Eurythmics,
Frankie Goes To Hollywood,
Talk Talk and
Propaganda
had a huge influence on my musical taste. Just as the more guitar orientated post-punk bands. Think of
the Cure,
the Waterboys
– we will get back to them in a later review –
the Talking Heads or my all-time favourite band
the Sisters of Mercy.
I loved the dark, yet romantic music, the danceable almost trance-like beats and the often sharp synthesizer melodies and guitar riffs of that era.
The New Wave scene was a very open-minded scene in a way. Ok, the dress code was black on black with some black to add to that, but musically it was quite diverse. It could be the electronic synthesizer sound of
Depeche Mode
or the dark rock-orientated sound of the Sisters of Mercy.
Soon certain bands started experimenting with non-traditional song structures, included non-pop instruments like violin, trumpet or cello and started a style we now know as post-rock or avant-garde. One of the first bands to do so were Talk Talk. Their 1988 jazzy/avant-garde album Spirit Of Eden still holds pride of place in my record collection. Another band to do so were
Dead Can Dance.
This Australian duo started weaving European, medieval and orchestral influences into their music, giving them a unique avant-garde, ambient sound. So what is the point behind this musical trip down memory lane? Well, I wasn’t the only one that loved the music of this era. A certain young lady from España did just that, especially the music of the last band I mentioned, Dead Can Dance.
This young lady we now know as Lady Morte, and in 1999 she started making music herself. But I shouldn’t tell this part of the story, she should do it herself.
-‘ I was born in Barcelona in the autumn of 1980. Since I was a child my passions have always been arts and music and specifically singing.
During the 90s I was a lover of
medieval-, Celtic-, folk- and ethnic music. I passionately listened to bands like Dead Can Dance,
Ataraxia,Corvus Corax,
Sopor Aeternus
and many more. In 1999 I decided to start work on a musical project which I called Trobar de Morte. It was a solo project where I played the keyboards accompanying my voice for some time. I played at other bands from Barcelona (
Ordo Funebris
and
Dark & Beauty
) for a few years, but in 2003 I decided to create my own live band and thus I searched for bandmates for Trobar de Morte.’
The first album she recorded with
Trobar de Morte
was the mini-CD Nocturnal Dance Of The Dragonfly (2003).
A mini-album filled with lovely orchestral pagan folk music. You can see Nocturnal Dance of The Dragonfly as a true blueprint for Trobar de Morte’s sound. Slow, orchestral melodies, with an emphasis on violins, keyboards, and guitar, with Lady Morte’s beautiful classically trained vocals over it. Nocturnal Dance Of The Dragonfly is a beautiful cross between Dead Can Dance and
Adiemus.
On Fairydust (2004) – Trobar de Morte’s first full-length album – the first influences of Corvus Corax crept in. That typical sound of pagan folk percussion and those strong medieval instruments that Corvus Corax are known for. It all blended perfectly with the ambient sound from Nocturnal Dance Of The Dragonfly. The song Los Duendes Del Reloj is a beautiful example of that early Trobar de Morte sound. Listening to it now after so many years proves the band stayed very true to their original sound, as you will find out when you listen to the newest Trobar de Morte release 20 Years of Music and Sorcery (2020). Another stunning song of those early days is Ailein Duinn – found on Fairydust – an a capella piece sung by Lady Morte, showcasing her amazing voice.
Fast forward 19 years, we are now in 2018 and Trobar de Morte have just released their 9th record Witchcraft. (Not counting the Ancient Tales demo Lady Morte recorded in 1999), and as I said, it is amazing how little has changed over those years. All the elements that make the music of Trobar de Morte so beautiful are still there. The impressive orchestral ambient sound, the layered choral vocals of Lady Morte, the fairytale feel to it all. Right from the first notes of the intro La Era de las Brujas, you’ll hear that it still is a powerful mix between Dead Can Dance and Adiemus with lovely splashes of
Loreena McKennitt
and medieval darkness thrown in there for good measure.
Don’t get me wrong it is not like the band stood still all those years. With the second track, Zuggaramurdi, you can clearly hear how the band’s sound evolved. It’s the logical difference between a young group at the beginning of their career and an experienced band. The difference between a lovely fairytale as you read it when you are around 14/15 and a deep dark fantasy world you dive into when you’re older. The music became deeper, the arrangements more imposing, but the songs still maintained that true pagan magic it had in those early days. Only stronger, waaaay stronger, just listen to those bagpipes cutting through the song as if they were knives cutting through dark smoke. It gives me goosebumps all over every time I hear it.
Rondalla, the third song on Witchcraft, is another good example. It’s a strong dark song, based on excerpts from ancient spells and magic books. Trobar de Morte put that in a powerful dark pagan folk meets Dead Can Dance song. I just love those strong layered Latin vocals, the broad orchestral arrangements and that strong beat under it. The tubular bells ringing right at the beginning of the song already give me shivers shooting from top to bottom over my spine. The wall of organ, percussion, and vocals then finish the job, I’m lost in my own ancient medieval fantasy world. Easily one of the best songs on Witchcraft.
The power of Trobar de Morte is that they can take that huge orchestral avant-garde style and make it sound natural and small. The song The Black Forest is a good example of that quality. Yes, there are those layered vocals, but the song is carried by a nice bouzouki riff, a lovely violin melody and some cool tribal percussion under it. The bridge in the middle of the song, for example is just pure acoustic pagan folk. It is THAT which makes Trobar’s music so strong: the clever contrast between all the broad electronic sounds and the natural feel of the acoustic instruments. It is THAT which makes the Witchcraft album such a strong, almost religious, pagan folk experience. Not to mention the lovely solos you hear from both the violin and the flute in The Black Forest. In the end Trobar de Morte is a band playing real music.
There is no song in which you hear that more clearly than in Sister Of The Night. It is a song that Dead Can Dance would be proud to have recorded on one of their own records. That lovely contrast between the acoustic guitar intro, giving it a lovely Spanish touch, and the dark, medieval pagan folk feel with its whispered vocals. A stunning song which, because of its natural feel, captures me even more than the music of the Australian band that inspired Lady Morte all those years ago.
Lady Morte and Daimoniel know how to write a good song. All of them creep easily into your ears, and one of the catchiest ones would be Mater Luna, with stunning vocals by Lady Morte. It starts as a lovely
ballad, with a touching guitar intro and violin melody over it. The low whistle solo is a treat, but the
best part is the
Shireen–
like bassline and violin part that lead us into a cool witch pop final to this song.
Ritual is one of the last songs I want to mention. It just feels religious, the whole arrangement of the song. The dark feel of it all, the orchestral carpet of keyboard and violin. The deep, deep percussion, slow but seemingly unstoppable, not to mention those haunting horn-like sounds at the start. An intense pagan folk cross of avant-garde and ancient traditional music. I know I mention Dead Can Dance a lot in this review, but somehow the theme of witchcraft brought out an album that is the closest to the Australian duo’s strong orchestral sound. And if it’s as extremely beautiful as Trobar de Morte do it on Wichcraft I am not complaining.
I could still mention The Circle, with its clear Arabian influences, reminiscent of
The Moon And The Night Spirit’s
sound, or The Wind, another lovely orchestral ballad with another beautiful low whistle solo, but, or Stramonium,….. But no! This is not an album I should split up into thirteen little segments. This is a wonderful record that you should listen to as one piece. If your heart opens up to slow, balladesque, dark, pagan folk music, with a lot of ritual feel to it, this is an album for you. Fans of Trobar de Morte’s music and fans of the bands I mentioned in the review will most likely have added Witchcraft to their collection months ago. Will you?
– Cliff
Editor: Diane Deroubaix
Sleeve art:Victoria Francés
Picture:Cliff de Booy
Philip Xander – Prelude (2019) review
03Feb
celtadmin
0 Comments
Can you put the feel of an early spring morning on a CD? If you are a talented musician like
Philip Xander
you can. With Prelude he has written and recorded the perfect soundtrack for a lovely sun-filled April morning drama movie. Prelude is filled with twelve instrumental songs that combine the magic of folk- and world music with touches of gypsy cheerfulness, prog-rock twists, and contemporary music quality. Philip felt no boundaries while writing the material for Prelude. No, on the contrary, he clearly used only one criterion: ‘if it sounds right, use it.’ and that makes Prelude a lovely album, that I highly recommend to any contemporary music lover.
Philip Xander is a Dutch multi-instrumentalist who started his folk career as the guitarist of
Omnia,
and is now dividing his time between the gypsy-, chanson-, klezmer- and Balkan folk band
Saffron Sun,
in which he plays eastern/Arabic percussion and the Irish folk band
Withershins
in which he plays guitar and mandolin. Besides that, he often accompanies musicians like
Gwendolyn Snowdon
during their live shows
And now I hold his first solo album Prelude in front of me. A CD he recorded with the help of his friends:
Anne Bakker(violin);
Emelie Waldken(nyckelharpa);
Anouk Platenkamp (harp);
Judith Renkema(double bass);
Otto de Jong (drums, tabla, and percussion);
Erwin Tuijl (piano, keys, Rhodes, synths, harmonium, therevox)
and of course Philip himself on guitar, mandolin, darbuka, and frame drum. Philip also composed and produced all the songs and Erwin Tuijl was responsible for the recording, mixing and producing of Prelude.
Philip playing New Heart, New World from his first solo album Prelude
The new album Prelude
Philip Xander isn’t the person to claim the spotlight, so Prelude is not an acoustic guitar solo extravaganza. No, it really is a collection of lovely songs with a real band feel to them, starting with the lovely song Drifting; a beautiful tender guitar melody that I could listen to for hours. Although it is only Philip on guitar playing this song, I would not call it a solo. It is a melody, a thought, a feeling put down to music. Seamlessly it flows over into Children of Chance. A fun, slightly jazzy cross between a gypsy folk song and a contemporary pop song with a piano melody that could have been written by
Jyoti Verhoeff.
This really IS spring in music form: lovely and funny with so many interesting melodies. The show is stolen, not by Philip, but by the beautiful violin of Anne Bakker. Gypsy style violin, distorted psychedelic sounds, gracious classical melodies, she does it all. What a lovely start to this CD.
After the slightly odd intermezzo of First Rites, Prelude continues with another beautiful instrumental ballad: Generations. ‘Tender’ is the word for this song. A tender piano melody to start it, tender guitar playing by Philip to continue it, and a tender transition of tempo halfway through the song representing the different generations -question mark- who knows. You make up your own mind. In the meantime just enjoy the musical experience.
And that experience continues with a huge smile on my part when I hear the cheerful mandolin melody that starts the fifth song: Dawn. Philip and his friends have really managed to capture the feeling I get when I go out in the wild before sunrise. The feeling I have sitting somewhere along the water’s edge, waiting for the world to wake up.
As I said the power of Prelude is that it doesn’t sound like a solo escapade. Philip didn’t write twelve guitar solos. No, he wrote twelve real songs, sometimes dreamy, sometimes folky, sometimes just acoustic guitar songs, and sometimes all of those at once. As you can hear in Nadir – Zenith. The song starts off really dreamy, then picks up speed to become a nice acoustic guitar song only to speed up again and have the talented Emelie Waldken join in with her Nyckelharpa, making it a lovely contemporary dreamy folk song.
In the first section and most of the second section of Prelude– the record is divided into 3 sections of each four songs- the album is a lovely sweet instrumental CD, drifting between dreamy acoustic guitar melodies and enjoyable folk tunes. With Gallery of Faces Philip introduces a new tone. a wee bit harsher, a wee bit more psychedelic. As if the innocence of youth is gradually lost. As if something went wrong in this lovely musical dream world.
This tone is continued on the third and last section of Prelude. The song The Puzzlebox is played on a baritone guitar, making it sound lower, more ‘adult’ to me. On Enthaos we really start to hear Philips psychedelic side. Still subtle, still tender, but clearly shifting towards the style of Jyoti Verhoeff. It contains an odd, somewhat jazzy melody that seems to be played on a xylophone; and piano chords that -for a brief second- reminds me of a famous
Billy Joel
song and I’m loving it all. I am loving The Puzzlebox’s ‘weirdness’, its uniqueness. Philip’s subtle play with emotions within the music.
The psychedelic tones of Enthaos flow effortlessly into Children of Suffering. Again a song that breaches the gap between dream folk and Jyoti Verhoeff’s contemporary avant-garde style. Children of Suffering has a fuller, more poppy arrangement than the other songs on prelude. Partly because of the full hammond organ and other keyboard sounds, and partly because of the full string sound under it. Not to mention the grand prog-rock finale, full drums, keys, and strings, all coming together in a sudden stop. Philip did mention his solo album would be [quote]: “An instrumental art-folk concept album, blending various kinds of folk- and world music with contemporary influences and psychedelic undertones.” Well in Children of Suffering he brings all of this together
Coloured Smoke is the perfect, balanced ending to a wonderful debut CD. Highly recommended to those who love contemporary music in the style of
Hans Elzinga
or the Dutch band
Flairck.
There is a clear story flowing through the CD, but it is done so subtle that you can either choose to take the music as is, as lovely melodies to enjoy, or dive into the music and create your own story while listening. Either way Philip and his friends have created a beautiful album, that will make many, many more rounds in my CD player. I have absolutely no doubts about that.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Home 
About us
A deep and powerful string intro makes this song come closest to the music we normally play at CeltCast. Together with the tribal drums, it could be the intro to a
Cesair
song if it wasn’t for those warm soulful vocals of Rachel coming in, somewhere between Joss Stone, Dani Klein and
Tanita Tikaram.
Old Climbing Tree is the most Celtic of the songs on Hours Awake: most of the songs hover somewhere between singer-songwriter material, American folk and the contemporary pop music made by artists like Adele – they are jazzy, deeply rooted in musical history, and yet sound modern, contemporary.
It is almost impossible to name one highlight. Hear Me, the 70’s style In Blue or Rainier Day, the jazzy Don’t Feel like Holding On with its lovely violin melody weaving through it, 6,000 miles, they are all equally beautiful singer-songwriter ballads.
If I had to choose my favourites I would pick Can’t Replace Your Perfect, a soulful gospel ballad that wouldn’t look out of place on a Joss Stone or a Croft Mullen band album (yes, Rachel and Karl Mullen still perform together), the powerful opener Old Climbing Tree and of course the wonderful first single Only Dreams. Rachel is on her very VERY best in that song, with a voice so rich and warm that it is capable of melting the chocolate ice cream in your refrigerator.
This young lady has a great career ahead of her. Trust me, in a few year’s time she will be huge, so go see her next time she is performing at Elfia, you won’t regret it. Not at all!
– Cliff
Editor: Iris de Wolf
sleeve art: D. Somme
picture: Rachel Croft
Video of Songbird posted with kind permission of Martin Waring
