Ensemble Eriu - Stargazer: a genre-busting, spine-tingling collection

For their third album, western genre-busters Ensemble Eriu have, appropriately, drawn inspiration from the later paintings of Jack B Yeats.

Like the great Sligo expressionist, this much-admired septet - led by bassist Neil Ó Loclainn and concertina player Jack Talty - know how to locate the universal in the local, and they approach the parochial and the cosmopolitan with the same mix of curiosity, originality and musical craftsmanship.

Though firmly (and audibly) rooted in the Irish tradition, O’Loclainn’s and Talty’s through-composed pieces draw on elements of serialism, minimalism and African blues, as well as contemporary jazz and improv, creating a numinous, mysterious sound world that is at times spine-tingling, at others ineffably melancholic.

[ diatribe.ie ]