Owerset

Surrounded by the bowed drones of Bridget Marsden's fiddle, Leif Ottosson's accordion and Morten Kvam's double bass, Sarah-Jane Summers' fiddle sounds uncannily like bagpipes. It is one inventive moment among many within Owerset's opening track, ‘Gal-Ghàidheil (Norse-Gaels)’. Summers is an extremely inventive fiddler and arranger and Owerset is an album that deploys every instrument of its sextet skilfully. Always sympathetic, the musicians have a knack for twining satisfying harmonies about each other, heard to great effect in the main riff of track ‘Sgeig’.

A commission for last year's Celtic Connections festival, the album would go down a storm at arts centres and on Radio 3. However, it is not nearly as challenging as Summers' previous, more exploratory work. ‘Fitakaleerie’ has an enjoyable ‘jazzy folk outside the bohemian café’ vibe to it, while ‘Flit’ adopts the ‘power folk’ conventions that so many contemporary folk ensembles default to. But Summers' music is usually all the stronger for resisting the obvious, taking subtle steps or radical leaps between the traditional and the unfamiliar. ‘Gate’ begins much more promisingly, with Summers and trumpeter Hayden Powell paying microscopic attention to pitch while exploring breathy-sounding extended instrumental techniques. But it doesn't last; on this album, any wayward sonic adventuring is a prelude to the tasteful acoustic chamber music that is the album's mainstay.