To Belfast...

A ruminative opening introduces swelling overdubbed violins; Conor Caldwell's fiddle melody-line rides atop their bank of drones much like the uilleann or Highland pipes. It's a gateway into this album's sound-world, taken a step further by the raindrop-like pizzicato backdrop of ‘Let Erin Remember’. Caldwell clearly has a gift for placing traditional material in atmospheric and intriguing new settings. Said traditional material here consists of tunes collected by Belfast-based organist Edward Bunting in the early 19th century; Caldwell describes Belfast as a city from which he is proud to hail and this whole album is evidently a well-considered labour of love.

To this reviewer's ears, the most enjoyable tracks are actually those that ditch the experimentation altogether and are played entirely solo; or those which add just the merest pinch of judicious overdubbing, as heard on the hop jigs that Caldwell appends to ‘Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms’. The latter air was famously reinvented by the iconoclastic fiddler Tommy Potts, whose influence can clearly be heard in the avian flights of fancy of ‘Bunting MS6 No 14’, a tune of Caldwell's that introduces a wholly unaccompanied middle section of the album. On these tracks his musicality and his handling of space are all on display with no safety net, and he truly flies.