Worlds Collide by Notify. Orchestras and a jazz tinged folk tradition emerge triumphant, after a bit of a wait.

Release Date: 24th January 2025

Label: Liosbeg Records

Format: CD / digital

INNOVATIVE AND EXPERIMENTAL

Despite the accolade of being “Known for their innovative and experimental approach“, I confess the name new to me, perhaps an issue relating to the width of the Irish Sea and the variable focus either side thereof. World famous in Wexlow does not always translate to known of in Knutsford. Not that I am from Knutsford nor they from Wexlow, but you catch my drift. Irrespective all that, this is an acquaintance now made and worth, I think, the having.

Think? Well, that’s to discover, as this album is one of those vast collaboratives, performed live to boot, with the six piece band, plus one special guest, joined by both the Irish Concertina Orchestra and the MGCE Concert Orchestra. All in all, including conductor Cormac McCarthy, that’s 64 people on stage. Some brief background is needed. Notify are, broadly, a concertina led folk fusion band, the fusion largely into a smooth jazz sensibility, via electric piano, electric guitar and a rhythm section, fiddle also present to prop up the trad end. Here there is also an extra acoustic guitar.

The Irish Concertina Orchestra seem more a teaching and educational tool, enrolling and engaging gifted youngsters, 10-18, to take part in a year long internship of playing together. The MCGE Concert Orchestra, Music Generation Clare being the acronym expanded, occupies perhaps a similar initiative, it being also a training and informative organisation for budding classical players.

BETTER THAN ROCK BAND AND ORCHESTRA…

So band and orchestration, a beloved and much revisited construct I have never quite fully got. It seems always a staple of those big city music festivals, in plush concert halls, where respectability is key, and, where, if you want serious and highbrow, chuck in an orchestra. When it works, and it can, it can be immensely satisfying. Celtic Connections seem to have this sussed, and, in Ireland, through the likes of Shaun Davey, there is also a strong tradition for this. But all to often it is an unnecessary expense, a dilution of the separate components into a muddy backwash of neither folk nor classical. (Better than rock band and orchestra, mind, but that’s another story).

As it opens, with chords of Fender Rhodes, the first thing noted is the quietness of it all, chinks of background woodwind ushering in the solo concertina of Pádraig Rynne, strings adding an elegant frame. Meanwhile the piano keeps a stately pace, the rhythm section a muted witness. Mays Smile then breaks into Amber Spring, a livelier near jig, the fiddle of Tara Breen slotting alongside Rynne, with the percussion now more apparent, if still restrained. Very polite, I have noted, with Hugh Dillon, peeling off a tasty, if subdued, guitar motif, perhaps the key point. I can hear the concert orchestra, but where are the 37 other concertinas?

THE GAME RAISED

Arty’s Words has again a piano start from Rory McCarthy, before Rynne squeezes away the main melody. The piano seems to be playing what might elsewhere be harp, and the MGCE are all discreetly adding a decent soundscape. McCarthy takes the lead for a mo, then Breen, similarly momentarily, before it is Rynne back in pole. Once more the orchestration is fine, but this feels more incidental or film music than anything much innovative.

The game gets raised by Hiding In The Magic World, with a chugging slow syncopated riff from Dillon, allowing bassist Adam Taylor and drummer Davie Ryan a little more purpose. In fact, once Rynne has had his turn, it all gets quite lively, if a little drenched by strings. I have yet to fully discern the acoustic guitar of special guest Jim Murray. Wondering if this the same fella as plays with Sharon Shannon? If so, a little wasted thus far.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING CONCERTINAS….

And so it continues, seguing into the slower melancholy of The Passing Of Life. Concertina and piano give this yearning air a suitably wistful atmosphere, unadorned by anything much else. The less being so much more powerful than the more. Idir creeps in on a shimmer of orchestration, and is a short reverie that really only otherwise troubles the same two players, this time with additional Breen. But before tutting around my prejudice bearing fruit, suddenly some french horns strike up, bringing a lovely pastoral moment into being. Strings and woodwind cradle a mood previously lacking. La Grene it is called, but, annoyingly, rather than pursuing this, Rynne and Breen spark it up into some rather too obvious jiggery-pokery, both too sweet and without enough gallop in the haunches.

Ryan must be bored silly at his kit, trotting out a perfunctory metronome. Dillon almost saves the day, with a wee flourish of the tune as it ends, if more for the sound than the fury. And, again, where are all the additional bloody concertinas?

HERE’S NILE….

Other Side Of The Glass offers the further hint of where this project could and should be going. The arrangement of strings a winsome counterpoint to Rynne’s concertinastics. Breen adds weight to that feeling, and the rest of the band seem more fully involved. Indeed, this is Breen’s moment. Her sawing, against the deep footprints of Taylor’s bass a delight, especially when the horns dive in. Ensemble play at last, with some almost Nile Rogers in Dillon’s accompaniment.

Strawberry Sun/Logic picks up from where that left off with some gorgeous fiddle/string section interplay, gradually weaving in a build of symmetrical layers that mean the second part of the track can leap off into the assymmetry the rhythm section now pour into the mix. This allows the hootenanny within all Irish music to emerge, the jazz roots of Notify making a rare stand. Dillon shakes off another salvo of well honed precision. A post samba rhythm from McCarthy’s piano the icing on the cake.

SUITS CRUMPLED, TIES LOOSE

The Strangest Thing is the final piece. And the longest, the burgeoning fusion between the orchestra and the band, between classicisms and folk, folk and not-folk, coming finally fully together. Yes, it is a little ragged about the edges of the massed ranks, and is all the better for that, as if the suits are now crumpled, and ties loose. Unexpected vocalisations add rather than detract, the effect akin, don’t laugh, to Michael Kiwanuka’s more florid set-pieces. Or even Kamasi Washington, when he goes all choir. An odd compare, but one that ends this project on a high, however hard to struggle to find.

WORTHWHILE OR WORTHY?

File under worthwhile, perhaps, rather than worthy. Probably not the best place to start off any acquaintance of Notify: their earlier albums, now sampled, are much more “innovative and experimental“. It may work better as the also available DVD, to be fair, so as to try and capture the nuances of actually being there. As the video below, of that final track, which does give the missing atmospheric room to soak in.

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