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INYAL - INYAL

INYAL - INYAL
Private Label INYAL001

The debut album from this Glasgow based ‘folktronica’ band, nominated for best Up And Coming Artist at last year’s Scots Trad Music Awards, is an imaginatively skilled fusion of electronica (drawing on elements of orchestral and composed contemporary music, jazz and hip-hop) with traditional folk instrumentation.

Inyal are Robbie Greig (fiddle), Hamish Macleod (electronics, keyboards, guitar),

Conal McDonagh (uilleann pipes, whistle) and Owen Sinclair (drums, percussion), with Charles Stewart (additional strings) and Radio 2’s 2017 Young Folk Award winner Josie Duncan’s very winsome and appealing voice on three traditional song rearrangements interspersed with their six original instrumental compositions.

The traditional instruments are arranged to weave intricate melodies through and soar over sometimes hefty and potent underpinning synth and drum patterns and, at other times, are integrated within gently ethereal and ambient soundscapes. There’s plentiful variety and sequential movement, both in melody and rhythm, and the blending is deft, indeed often captivating in its hooks and cinematic qualities...

…and then there are the songs, commissioned by Oilthigh Ghlaschu (University of Glasgow Ossian Society) for Celtic Connections last year. Air, a Lewis version of the lament of intrafamilial betrayal Bha Mnathan A’ Chaisteil is exquisitely moving with its spacious atmospheric soundscape. Likewise, waulking song Chi Mi (from the singing of Catherine MacNeil from Barra) is also a piece of lissom and luscious beauty.

Inyal surely has considerable potential in offering a distinctively compelling contemporary take on traditional song material and creating original instrumental music that is equally captivating in combining traditional instruments with the puissance and atmospheric charge of electronic musical instrumentation.

www.inyalband.com

Kevin T. Ward


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This album was reviewed in Issue 124 of The Living Tradition magazine.