365: Volume 2

Reveal Records issued Volume 1 in the spring of 2018, with Lau's fiddler joining forces with jazz pianist Kit Downes on harmonium and piano to bring to life pieces written by O'Rourke in response to his favourite prose writer, James Robertson, who wrote a story a day – of no more than 365 words – for a year. O'Rourke did likewise with a year of 365 tunes, drawing generously on Scottish and wider folk traditions while at the same time – as he does in Lau – folding those traditions into contemporary practice and combining them with Downes' intuitive jazz inflections.

Across two discs Volume 2 encompasses 25 short pieces (few clock in over the three-minute mark) and its sleeve notes include each of Robertson's short stories for the corresponding tune of the day. They're brilliant tales and the music is often very beautiful, opening up to the empathy redolent between two master instrumentalists setting off to explore and expand on what O'Rourke originally noted down on those days. The tunes derived from airs, such as ‘Inside the Whale’ as part of the track ‘I Had Been Walking a Long Time’, with Downes providing a drone accompaniment on harmonium, is one of the album's flavoursome highlights.