Deep End of The Ford

Hört man in den jüngsten Silberling der Folk-Avant-Gardisten, Deep End of the Ford (DEOTF), muss man konsterniert feststellen, dass diese Facette des Folk viel zu wenig Beachtung geschenkt wird. Angebot und Nachfrage scheinen sich bei dieser Form der sonstigen Unterhaltungsmusik jedoch in Grenzen zu halten. Hört man allerorts Off-Beat-wütigen Brüll-Folk, traditionelle Schunkelfolklore mit verstimmten Instrumenten oder Vierkopfbesetzungen, die erst unlängst zu den Instrumenten griffen, bietet An Táin den schwersten und diffizilsten Hörgenuss, den Celtic Rock mir bisher geboten hat.


Statt Drums, Bass, Gitarre und obligater Fiddle warten die fünf Herren mit gänzlich ungewöhnlicher Instrumentation auf: Mit Akkordeon, Bass-Klarinette, Saxophone, Piano, Violine, Whistles, einer Abart des Dudelsacks, synthetischen Klängen und eindringlichem Gesang warten die Musiker mit einer Instrumentation auf, die wohl länderübergreifend ihresgleichen sucht.

Basierend auf einer 2000 Jahre währenden und erst im 12. Jahrhundert im Book of Leinster niedergeschriebenen Überlieferungstraditionen, greift DEOTF also auf einen Stoff zurück, der selbst irischen Muttersprachlern die Haare aus den Ohren treiben dürfte. Freunde der irisch-sprachigen Mediävistik dürfte dieses Werk inhaltlich wahrscheinlich wohlige, semantisch-kulturelle Schauer über den Rücken jagen, indes dem Sprachunkundigen einzig die Musik bleibt.

Der Gesang des Frontmanns, Lorcán Mac Mathúna, ist von beinahe spirituell-priesterhafter Eindringlichkeit. Indes also wahrscheinlich von irischen Geschlechtern, einstigen Mythen und gewaltigen Wesen berichtet wird, scheint dem Unwissenden als sei er in einen prächristlichen Ritus geraten – als müsse den Boxen der heimischen Anlage Druiden entwachsen. Die eindringliche Kraft des Gesangs wird dabei von unfassbar experimentierfreudiger Instrumentation in wahrscheinlich prosodischer Einheit unterstützt. Dabei gelingt DEATF ein wahrer Geniestreich. Der Pathos des antiquiert wirkenden, sphärischen Gesamtklangs entwächst dabei einer Instrumentation, die alles andere als veraltet ist.

The sorcerous distortions wird durch Klarinette und Akkordeon beinahe orchestral unterlegt, indes die Violine in Sechzehnteln diesen Klang nicht nur unterstützt. Der Bogen der Geige scheint weitestgehend ungespannt, so dass neben den Klängen der Doppelsaiten auch das Kratzen des Bogenholzes auf den Saiten rhythmisiert. Dabei legen alle Instrumente eine spielerische Perfektion an den Tag, die, in Wechselwirkung mit der ungemeinen Innovationswut der Musiker, die Selbsternennung zur Avant-Garde ausdrucksstark unterstreicht

Dabei verzichten die Herren jedoch nie auf einfachere, folkloristische Elemente. So finden sich durch den Dudelsack vorgetragene Quasi-Reels als Ouvertüre zum nächsten pathetischen Stück, aber auch Fiddlesequenzen, die sich in den Gefilden des volksliedhaften Folk wohlfühlen würden.

An Táin ist ein Album auf technisch virtuosem Niveau. Betrifft dies in vielen Bands immer nur Einzelmusiker, so ist bei DEOTF festzustellen, dass ausnahmslos jeder Musiker den Genius gefressen zu haben scheint. Sich eines solchen Stoffes anzunehmen, erfordert nicht wenig Mut, ebendiesen dann aber auch noch in solch musische Gewandung zu packen, zeugt von musischer Integretität, die einzig das Kunstwerk und nicht den Rezipienten in Augenschein zu nehmen scheint. Wer sich an bisher-Ungehörtes wagen will, ist mit diesem Album bestens beraten. Wer indes auf stereotype Abläufe (à la Strophe-Refrain-Zwischenteil), auf eingängigen Sofort-Genuss und wohlfeile Schunkelmusik nicht verzichten mag, ist mit diesem Silberling vollkommen falsch beraten. Dieses Album verdient es nicht nur, in absoluter Ruhe konsumiert zu werden – es kann nicht anders gehört werden. Der Facettenreichtum, die ungeheure Bandbreite an beispielhafter Innovation, das Miteinander von Alt und Neu in perfekter Symbiose ist nichts für schwache Nerven. Wer sich aber durch dieses Album kämpft, denn nic - Celtic Rock Music

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
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
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
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
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 Mathuna 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
6 ‘Dinnseanachas’ is a rousing march tune dedicated to the lore of the places itself, played on the box and fiddle
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
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.

lorcanmacmathuna.com/antain/index.htm

GOTTA GET IT (ONE OF A KIND) - Trad Review

The Táin Bó Cuailnge or Cattle Raid of Cooley is an ancient Irish epic tale found in the 12th Century Book of Leinster. It tells the story of the hero Cú Chulainn and his feats in a bloody and harrowing battle among the tribes of Ireland over a stolen bull.

This work came into being as a commission from the Armagh Pipers club and sets a selection of text fragments from An Táin within a richly illustrated tapestry of sound. Its series of musical vignettes are crafted by the improvisatory collective Deep End of The Ford, forming a lucid backdrop for Lorcán Mac Mathúna’s sean-nós singing. His mellifluous Irish evokes the character of ancient Gaelic epic and highlights the intimate union that exists between the language and this often overlooked way of song.

Here the diverse resources of contemporary Irish traditional and improvisatory music are brought to task in a vivid musical imagining of an Iron-Age culture. It would be easy for this experiment to err too much on the side of New Age pastiche, yet the crisp instrumentation ensures that any connotation of ‘Celt Synth’ are quickly dispelled. The interplay of Seán Mac Erlaine’s bass clarinet, Martin Tourish’s accordion, eoghan Neff’s fiddle and Flaithrí Neff’s uilleann pipes creates a sound that contains elements of Irish trad, contemporary jazz, electronic, and post-rock, yet cannot be subsumed under any of these banners.

This release strikes the rare balance of being something both entirely new and genuinely experimental, while simultaneously working to invigorate and inspire interest in an ancient form of melodic development and vocal production.

Descriptions of each movement are provided in the sleevenotes and full Irish text and translation can be found on Mac Mathúna’s website - fROOTS

The tale of the Táin Bó Cuailgne, memorialised in the 12th-century Book of Leinster is invigorated by Cork singer Lorcan MacMathúna. Commissioned by the William Kennedy Piping Festival, this suite of 10 movements sounds primeval and its tone is haunting. MacMathúna’s never been afraid to venture into the unknown, as his last project, Northern Lights, a melding of Irish and Norse sagas attested. The primal impulse firing Flaithrí Neff’s pipes on the eighth movement, Caoineadh Fherdia, is the ideal foil for Lorcán’s belly-deep vocal patterns. But make no mistake: this is not music for the casual listener. It demands repeated exposure to reach beneath its surface, such are the demands of its patterns. Skipping directly to Scread Ceann Sualtaim, with fiddle and bass clarinet propelling the story, offers a relatively accessible entry to another world: alien but intriguing. lorcanmacmathuna.com/antain - The Irish Times

Horslips called it The Tain and added electricity to the 12th century text collected in The Book Of Leinster from a much older story. Now, Sean-Nós singer Lorcán Mac Mathúna who last appeared in these pages with his Irish/Scandinavian fusion, Northern Lights, has taken a rather different approach.

The story of Cù Chulainn and Meadhbh and a quarrel over a prize bull includes mystical prophesy, a demonic transformation, a headless corpse still retaining the power of speech and lots of blood – it would make a blockbuster of a film. Lorcán has gone back to the book and based his lyrics on the original text to the extent of singing in Old Irish although, helpfully, the full text of the songs and a translation appear on his website 1.

Musically, Deep End Of The Ford mix old and new sounds. Martin Tourish plays accordion and piano, Seán Mac Erlaine plays bass clarinet, Eoghan Neff plays fiddle and Flaithrí Neff uileann pipes and low whistle and all five performers are credited as composers. Added to this are electronic sounds and looped tapes and the music is heavy on the drones – something of a Mac Mathúna signature sound.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that An Táin will be heavy going. Lorcán has a lovely warm voice and the music easily carries you away. This is another wonderful album. Dai Jeffries - folking.com

Lorcán Mac Mathúna's latest musical project The Deep End of the Ford explores An Táin which is drawn from the text of The Book of Leinster. "An Táin has a place amoungst the epic myths of the world. Its relevant and contemporary lessons have echoed throughout two millennia, and is remarkably pertinent today" according to the sleeve notes. "Set in a time of tribal allegiances, An Táin mobilises the peoples of the entire territories of Ireland in an epic tale of greed, ambition, political manoeuvring, deceit and heroism" dealing with the"ruthless Meadbh, whose thirst for supreamacy and wealth ...drags the tribes of Ireland into a bloody conflict"

This sets the scene for a truly remarkable project by Lorcán. Using improvisational techniques he paints a haunting landscape of voice and sound that defy categorisation. Experimental in its design and brilliant in its scope, it places Lorcán and his fellow musicians Mairtin Tourish, Sean Mac Erlaine, Eoghan Neff and Flairthrí Neff a class apart and at the outer edge of avant-garde experimentation. With words taken from medieval Irish manuscripts and sung in original old-Irish form, they tell the story of An Táin in ten movements. Its conception alone requires musicians of vision and genius and its delivery is exemplary. It requires the listener to conjure up a pictorial landscape within which to place the sounds and music and this in itself stretches your own view of what music can be. Yes it is demanding of your own musical preconceptions of voice and sound and therein lies the challenge. Without being immersed in Lorcán's world it is hard to see what he sees or hear what he hears. This is the point where he and his fellow musicians become the possessed medium through which the art and music must pass if it is to have a voice.

This most definitely throws the door wide open with comprehension coming from immersion in their journey. Suffice it to say that every now and again you need to be challenged and shaken from your reverie. You need to expose yourself to people that take a different direction and manage to take you with them. Lorcán and company have pushed the boundary but not to the point where they lose you. They have opened the door a little, and you have taken a glimpse inside. It is a door to the other side of an imagined and more cerebral world. You can hear the voice and the music and the colours and landscapes are strikingly different. You open it further and step through and marvel at the sheer scale of what has been achieved, seeking to understand. A masterful work of genius by musicians that are breaking new ground and opening new doors as they transverse our musical horizons. - Tradconnect

At the end of Last year Lorcán Mac Mathúna, with Northern Lights (review here), took us back to mediaeval links between Ireland and Scandinavia. In Dubh agus Geal we were given a celebration of those links, drawn from the oral traditions of both regions. Lorcán’s latest project, The Deep End Of The Ford, takes us even further back in time; in a telling of the famous An Táín Bó Cualaigne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) – An Táin.

The epic Irish legend of Queen Meabdh and An Táín Bó Cualaigne is an Iron Age tale of politics, bloodshed and heroism that’s been retold through the centuries. Meabdh’s thirst for wealth and power manifests itself in a struggle to gain possession of a prize bull. The resultant conflict calls all the tribal powers of Ireland to battle and sets brother against brother.

In a unique combination of ancient, traditional and contemporary sources, Lorcán weaves vocal performances taken directly from the contents of 12th century manuscripts, with music that relies heavily on traditional melody and modern electronics alike. The Deep End Of The Ford are Lorcán MacMathúna (voice); Seán MacErlaine (bass clarinet, saxophone, electronics); Martin Tourish (piano accordion); Eoghan Neff (fiddle and looping station); Flaithrí Neff (uileann pipes, low whistles).

The ten movements presented in An Táín are each based on a separate passages in the tale. From the moment An Táín’s upbeat, cantering opening movement, The Pillow Talk, begins it’s clear that this is a singular and carefully crafted work. As the album progresses contrasting approaches to the music help distinguish the separate movements – The Prophesy of Fidelm’s dark, dreamlike echo emerging from a mist of sound becomes clear in a vocal performance that moves between power and murmur. The powerful sections of the vocal are stirring and anthemic, while the woodwind merged with ethereal electronics creates an enthralling dreamscape.

Some tracks are more song-like than others – Cú Chulainn’s Sleep has a gorgeous opening with pipes over plucked strings delivering a melody that’s echoed in the vocal. Whereas The Sorcerous Distortions is more evocative of dramatic tales by a communal fire, as a strident vocal injects a sense of rage and urgency that climbs towards two voices raised in incantation. The Manipulation of Fherdia, which reveals Meabdh’s successful attempts to control Cú Chulainn’s foster-brother, seems to employ modern cinematic techniques, with eerie woodwind and disturbing, demonic whispers accompanying a droning vocal.

Even taken out of the literary context, the music and song are accomplished and fascinating in their own right – Caoineadh Fherdia is an extensive lament with a synthesized, stretched out Jaws harp ‘neath the lament repeated on uileann pipes. If there’s one instrument that can deliver a lament with a power of expression approaching that of a vocal, it’s uileann pipes. The Cries of Sualtaim’s Head delivers the tale of the original headless horseman where strings predominate alongside a galloping vocal that immediately injects a sense of urgency. If any track could stand out on this album it would be this one. The pace is constant, the vocal alternates from hushed haste to strident insistence, and all the while the plucked strings and Eoghan Neff’s masterly fiddle in an elemental maelstrom.

Like Dubh Agus Geal – the sleeve notes for An Táin are essential to get the most out of this album. You can enjoy the music simply for what it is – enthralling and wonderfully crafted. But the descriptive notes put the music created by The Deep End Of The Ford within the context of the ancient narrative it portrays, and help take the listener back hundreds of years to the telling of the tale, and thousands of years to the birth of the legend.

- Folkradio.co.uk