Tóg É Go Bog É

Newly reissued on double-vinyl, Tóg É Go Bog É (Take it Easy) is Kíla's 1997 sophomore offering. Then already well-established as the raucous Dublin street-poets of Celtic Tiger Ireland, their mellowness on this album surprised listeners as much as their subtle fusing of traditional Irish instruments with a poetic swathe of borrowings from elsewhere. Two decades on the album seems quietly pioneering, offering a softer side to the seven-strong sonic lords of contemporary Irish music who found full flowering in the sophisticated delicacies of 2010's Soisín.

Here, it's the moments where raw, unrefined experiment flares into instrumental brilliance that point to achievements ahead. Eoin Dillon's dazzling uilleann pipes solo on ‘The Siege of Carrickfinn International Airport’ is one among many outstanding moments. Intelligently structured, Tóg É Go Bog É moves across 14 tracks from excitable fervour to more mellow passions, rising to the hypnotic, accordion-led ‘Ríl a Dó’ and chill-out closer ‘Tip Toe’ (the only song of five in English) with Rónán Ó Snodaigh's vocals a thing of bewitching broken beauty, and his brother Colm's plaintive hidden track is haunting and dark-hued. Salted and sweetened by Irish lyricism and passion, the addition of gourds, djembé, bouzouki, hammer dulcimer and much else variously ink in Eastern European, African, Caribbean and jazz elements, all seamlessly integrated by a septet firing on all cylinders.