Lews Castle, Stornoway, Saturday 17 July 2004

THE HIGH SPIRITS of the previous night cast a long shadow into the following day, but nothing that a few tunes from the U-18 bodhran champion of Ireland couldn’t fix. Playing with his band in An Lanntair on an exchange trip with Stornoway’s own young guns, Teine, he gave a masterclass in tuneful bodhran-ing before your man had to run for the main stage, Session A9 and Kila.

Session A9 are a large combo that come with an awesome reputation, and a membership that reads like the A-Z of certain parts of Scottish music. The big question is whether the A9s are bigger than the sum of their parts? The answer is an emphatic yes. A sheer joy, in fact, direct in the best way, with reels and jigs and the old ways with this music: fine tunesmiths in charge of blistering musicality – a fine final burst of bow-powered adenalin before the festival dimmed its lights for another year.

But the A9s weren’t the final act. That privilege went to the Irish band, Kila. This was the first time that this writer had caught Kila live on stage and they were nothing short of a revelation. The CDs beckon with a subtle, rich and often introspective edge. Live that translates into a mesmeric, even hypnotic sound, with a driven commitment to emotion.

It’s complex stuff in places, a knot of so many different threads that the single strands appear inseperable. It’s ambiguous music crafted to almost Baroque elaboration but the result is nothing short of compelling, driven by often rapid, trance like rhythms on the bodhran, mixed with short repeated phrases on the pipes and deep airs that seem to hang-glide over the white waters of the rhythm: exhilerating, edgy, unforgetable.

Different in mood and tone, this final night of the festival, was a triumph of subtle programming.
© Peter Urpeth, 2004

Related Sites:

Hebridean Celtic Festival website