Elbow Room

Following 2016's North, a set of bracing duos with Belfast-born fiddler Conor Caldwell, Elbow Room is the second solo offering from Donegal fiddler Danny Diamond. It's aptly titled: there's a discernible sense of boundaries being pushed and new territory annexed, with a discrete virtuosity that is fast becoming Diamond's signature. Much of the new material here has been informed by recent collaborations with poet Tom French, choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and the intriguing Dublin-based Irish-Nordic ensemble Slow Moving Clouds.

There's a nod to his influential Donegal predecessor John Doherty in the air ‘Maureen from Gibberland’, with Diamond's low-C open-tuning deftly mimicking the uilleann pipes for which the tune was originally written. Influences from other past fiddle masters are also prominent: Tommie Potts' free approach to rhythm and harmony is evident in ‘The Pinch of Snuff’, with hints of the late Padraig O'Keeffe in the measured and moving six-part hornpipe ‘Johnny Cope’. There are nods to American old-time fiddle music with a brace of ‘Powderhorn Polkas’ from Minnesota, traces of baroque-era violin technique throughout and a rich take on sean nós singing in Diamond's own haunting ‘An Buachaillín Bán'. A hint, too, of what sounds like the occasional electronically enhanced effect that whets the appetite for more.