Susan Grace Bates: Skorsa: The Riddle of the Earth | Album Review

The harp has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years, with Moya Brennan, Cormac de Barra, Anne Marie O’Farrell and Catriona McKay poking and prodding at its traditional boundaries with compelling results.

Antrim harper and singer Susan Grace Bates joins the fray with this frequently engaging debut collection.

Her compositional skills and her magpie instinct for gathering tunes from disparate quarters (Sweden, Norway, Estonia and Scotland) coalesce to create an idiosyncratic but impressively coherent soundscape.

Although occasionally meandering, this collection unveils a cool, clean musical sensibility that values space and light over fussy production.

At First Light’s John McSherry and Dónal O’Connor co-produce.