A rugby international night in a city centre hotel isn't the ideal environment for music performance, but Gerry McKee, as the "talker" here, ring mastered extraneous decibels magnificently.
To an insistent, kilted, would be fiddler from the audience he announced "Isn't that a bit like me going on to the pitch today and asking for a few kicks at the ball?" The bazouki player's wit and warmth somehow filtered, through the shocking abruptness of his Belfast sarcasm, a complementary interface to this band's challenging style and tune selection.
Equally well utilised was the seething energy of the place caught, converted and sent right back in a continuous, reprocessing, two hour exchange, for which the whistle blew finally on a soaring Guns of the Magnificent Seven, Boys of Malin and Gravel Walk. Casualty of the night, however, somewhat swamped by the scrum, was John Spillane's acoustic guitar accompanied "contemporary sean nos" lyric song.
New and newish tunes like Liz Carroll's Morse Avenue, The Parker Twins, The Corsair were blended here with carefully chosen older Donegal, Cape Breton and Scottish material (a mix that recalls the specialisation of the band's original fiddler, Liz Doherty). This sympathetic union, with just a seasoning of Irish tunes and interpreted by the thorough Irishness of its players' backgrounds an attitude is what Nomos seems to be.
Central to their sound was Niall Vallely's agile concertina clipped triplets, barking bass notes and delicate treble finesse, precisely metered and distributed change of tempo, time signature and genre.
Momentary breaks into jazz, then swing, gave the music a unique stamp, something interpreted well by "new" fiddler Vincent Milne on his six part, Tommy Peoples sourced Rosie O'Grady.
These improvisations were impressively interdependent, underlain by Spillane's tasty electric bass and off beat guitar, an insistent and sympathetic pulse from Frank Torpey's tiny bodhran a rising and falling, entering and retreating, with terrific variety of stick striking and hand tensioning. A great swelling, emotional tide of synchronised wind, strings and skin was most finely displayed on The Tuskar, New Mown Meadow and Just for Liz reels.
