Traditional

Latest CD release reviewed

ULSTER-SCOTS FOLK ORCHESTRA
Somme No label **

The past is another country, and this collection fixates on the horrors of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, when 5,553 members of the Ulster Division perished on the fields of Picardy. Laden with a blood-curdling fixation on the underbelly of war (complete with the sound of shotguns literally firing the opening salvos of Brian Ború's March), this is fodder for local appetites that fails to touch a chord that might reverberate for anyone outside of the hinterland from whence the soldiers came. Ominous pipes, chest-thumping eulogies and an ill-advised conglomeration of whistles, pipes and choir plod their way through a swathe of songs and tunes of diverse provenance, and of spurious common bond. A classic snapshot of the chasm that can sometimes sunder the local from the global. www.ulster-scots-folk.com  Siobhán Long