Late Junction 🔊 (BBC Radio 3) - 2

From The Haar's second album Where Old Ghosts Meet. “We let our imaginations run free with these old favourites" say the band.

The result is breathtaking beautiful, audaciously ambitious in its scope and, most importantly, a living document that proves the vitality of these ‘old favourites’.

Wild Rover, is a case in point: not for The Haar the bonhomie of The Dubliner, this is an eerie and sinister interpretation that reveals (with the addition of a final verse by Summerhayes) the jealousy, envy and covetousness that their wild rover is met with upon his return. Molly sang a few experimental bars in a minor key, Cormac added a few quietly ominous strikes and the band fell in love with the feel. Adam and Murray found a dark sound, imbued with hints of Arabic and klezmer music. Deciding that Molly would start alone, they simply hit record and let it flow.

This is just one example of several where the band, who feature not one but two FATEA Instrumentalists of the Year Award winners, take a familiar tune and turn into something fresh that mysteriously feels as if you have known it forever.

This is a product of free-thinking and intuitive musicians at the very height of their powers. It is at times whisper quiet - Molly Donnery’s voice balancing delicately upon her breath, the slight rasp of reeds from Murray Grainger’s accordion, the brush of Cormac Byrne’s beater upon bohdrán skin, the scrape of rosin and horse hair on Adam Summerhayes’s strings -  and there are moments of drama and high tension; you can sense the high-wire act thrill of their ‘in-the-moment’ composition in every held note and shift in dynamic.

The concept might seem oxymoronic, but  if you’re looking for the cutting edge of traditional music, it is here.

WILD ROVER

Wild Rover was first referenced in Ireland in the 16th C, but was widely shared, particularly amongst North Atlantic fishing port communities. We revel in the warmth of the melody and its feel of endless lost possibilities, with an ecstasy of yearning at the mention of the handsome rover… perhaps a foreshadowing of the Wild Rover to follow. Our tale of the Wild Rover serves as a potent lesson to our extravagantly consuming society in the wake of current global environmental destruction. We meet the Wild Rover as he reaches a critical time, faced with the opportunity to turn his back on excessive consumption and face up to his past before he loses everything. Vowing to change, and knowing he must, the lure of excess proves too strong a lust.  But continuing profligacy and extravagance come at a cost. He succumbs once again when so close to change, and the prodigal son pays the ultimate price for his ways. An opportunity has been missed, never to return… never no more."

For more information, interviews and hi res photos contact katie@fromthewhitehouse.com  07832 200980  

Adam Summerhayes - fiddle Murray Grainger - accordion and vibrandoneon  Cormac Byrne - bodhrán Molly Donnery - vocal 
Trad arr. Byrne, Donnery, Grainger, Summerhayes (last verse lyrics of Wild Rover - Adam Summerhayes) 

Self published Under The Eaves Records (UTE006) | Recorded at Under The Eaves Studios, Rosedale

Produced and mixed by Murray Grainger |Additonal production by Cormac Byrne and Adam Summerhayes | Enginered by Murray Grainger | Mastered by Jon Astley  Artwork ’Where Old Ghosts Meet’ by Adam Summerhayes

04 - The Haar - Wild Rover

Aeolian Mixtape

Natural Environments No. 1 (feat. The House of Bedlam & Chihiro Ono)

Simon Knighton