Live in Kyoto

Serving up ten tracks of previously unrecorded material captured in situ before an audience, Live in Kyoto can’t be faulted for the boldness of its concept. Or for its execution. Recorded over three nights in late 2023 in the city’s TakuTaku club, it feels surprisingly intimate, appropriately enough for the scale of one of Japan’s most iconic ‘live houses’. No strangers to live recordings, this is the third such from Lúnasa after 2013’s collaboration with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and The Kinnitty Sessions in 2004. With Mike McGrath’s masterly live engineering boasting studio-like clarity, the result is a satisfying, well-tailored programme delivered with the distinctive blending of tightly reciprocal but almost casually dispatched ensemble playing that has become the quintet’s signature. Opener ‘The Bull’s Track’ foregrounds Cillian Vallely’s songful uilleann pipes, stepping up a gear with ‘Red Ned’s’, a brace of swinging tunes for pipes and Kevin Crawford’s flute. Vallely’s writing is as central throughout as his playing, his own ‘The Rock Road’ a trio of expressively contrasted instrumentals, his tranquil flute duet with Crawford on ‘Man from Moyasta’ sitting atop the warm thermals of Ed Boyd’s guitar. There’s a becoming nod to wider Celtic affinities in the rhythmically buoyant Breton-accented ‘Bal Loudieg’ while album closer ‘Cabin the Woods’ is a jaunty package of reels bringing an otherwise laid-back recital to an upbeat ending.