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TAILCOAT - Tall Tales In Tiny Pieces 

TAILCOAT - Tall Tales In Tiny Pieces 
Go Danish Folk Music GO1119 

A brief background… Formed in 2016, Tailcoat are three Danes and two Swedes; four men and one woman; playing fiddle and Hardanger fiddle, cittern, nyckelharpa, bass guitar and (mostly hand, mostly Middle Eastern) percussion.

All the interesting and melodic compositions here are by band members and are in the style of the Danish and Swedish traditions. Though they are based on dance rhythms, this sounds much more like concert performance than functional dance music.

Danish fiddler Henriette Ambæk Flach and the Swedish nyckelharpa player Rasmus Brinck are at the core of the melodies that Tailcoat plays, and it was they that built the band around their original duo partnership. The strength of these two playing on their own also provides some of the album's most arresting sounds, for example, the first part of Norddanvind / En Ven Af Min. The fiddle and nyckelharpa are also at the fore in what is probably the album's most engaging tune, the delightful slow waltz, Måske I Næste Liv. There are opportunities for all to show their undoubted musical skills; Tågesl?r is mainly Villads Hoffmann's cittern, and elsewhere the percussion of Mårten Hillbom is featured.

In trying to place a foreign band that is little known in the UK it can be useful to make a comparison with a British band that operates in the same area, so let's say that in their experimental-music-based-on-the-tradition approach there are similarities to the Bristol band, Spiro.

www.tailcoatmusic.com

Vic Smith