Momentous and majestic, INYAL are back and prisoners won’t be taken, as they revive the whole genre.
THE PRESTIGE OF CELTIC CONNECTIONS
If there is a reason why Scottish vinyl factories and CD manufacturing units go into overdrive in January, that is Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s yearly celebration of music. Nominally a folk festival, spread across the city’s varied venues and lasting an extended two weeks, it now features much broader diversities of style, encompassing also World music, Americana and much much more. A CC gig is always a prestige gig, and many artists combine such prestige with the opportunity to launch of material. INYAL are one such band.
Yes, INYAL are still a thing. It may have been eight years since sight was last seen, their eponymous 2018 debut threatening to be the only memento of their existence, but no, back they are, with still the same line-up. A glance at the names reveals perhaps why the delay, all being in demand artists, with pies on every shelf. This is how it is for jobbing musicians these days, and thank goodness for events like CC, wherein all the myriad clans get to reconvene in this vibrant city of music.
NAY TO NEO-TRAD
Folktronica, or as maybe better describes INYAL, Gaelictronica, is nowadays not always a term of recommendation, it too often consisting of clumsily bolted electronic house beats to overly-effusive jiggery pokery. Heck, even Niteworks, the undoubted masters of the genre, distanced themselves, preferring neo-trad. But INYAL, in embracing the term, or folk/electronica at least, are brave enough to mention it upfront, and I’m glad that they do, the tonic in their ‘tronic deserving no such other description.
INTOXICATING
A shimmer of synths and a slowly strumming guitar beckon in the album, opening with the titular piece, with a skitter of intent then bubbling up through the mix. A revolving sequencer rotates, and a welter of strings rise up in a flurry; real strings, too, and not just those of Robbie Greig, the fiddler so integral to the overall sound of INYAL, but a full string quartet. And not any string quartet either, but yet another of the Seonaid Aitken, Patsy Reid and Alice Allen masterclass, here joined by Claire Telford.
The mix of their orchestration with Hamish MacLeod’s keyboard fauxchestration is intoxicating. As Conal McDonagh’s whistle billows in, to Owen Sinclair’s impeccable metronome at the back, Josie Duncan is the final member of the quintet to engage, with her confident mellow croon, wordlessly incanting what must surely be a spell. Colour me conjured.
IMBUED WITH GLEE
That hurdle, track one, effortlessly vaulted, it is straight into Calum Bhàn that Duncan and the band hurtle. A throb of lower register beds the soaring mix of vocals, strings and keys, those vocal subject to burst of double track and echo. Unmistakeably a waulking song, it is imbued with such glee as to have the tweed stretching for the sheer hell of it.
For Lucky Ones, McDonagh fires up his uillean pipes with such abandon that the heady days of the Afro-Celts are instantly recalled, the mix of organic with the electronic both earthy and, sorry, electric. An instrumental, it shows off a side of the player that his ‘other’ band, Breabach, have never quite seen him realise. A fiddle calisthenic bridges into the second part of the tune, Greig then taking a fiddle lead, with McDonagh switching to, or rather, adding, whistle. Greig, who we have heard with the Paul McKenna Band, is likewise relishing his greater freedom. Two-nil!
A BEVY OF DUNCANS
Some baroque adjacent piano introduces Fadachd. This comes from Dan Brown, another guest musician, and another name we know, currently both solo and in Tern. Owen Sinclair, in Inyal as the drummer, provides a steady background patter. I say the drummer, as, in other contexts, being a guitarist in Westward the Light and Tannara, taking vocals also for the second, as well as an accomplished fiddle tutor. Did I mention this was another song?
Well, if not, Duncan, having already set out her stall so convincingly, now takes things up a notch, selling, effortlessly, the idea she might be the best of what is a pretty damn big field, which is singing the Gaelic. No wonder she has been in such demand for Kathryn Tickell and An Danssa Dub. As the vocals become choral, courtesy the boys in the band and a bevy of Duncans, it fill richly and roundly out.
JUDDERING EUPHORIA
A’ Mhairead Òg is a further song, a gentler ballad borne on a floating bed of oscillating fiddle and whistle. As the drums join in, both real and programmed, and the sounds of the quintet blend, the hit of euphoria arrives, both in the sense of the mood induced and the style employed. The now juddering whole builds, drops, build again and, finally, drops. Leaving not a second for recap and reflection, Baile M’Àrach surges onward and upward, Duncan sounding somewhere midway between a kelpie and a dryad. A barest click track of percussion hedges in the atmospheric, itself between eerie and ethereal.
And, as trance begets Trance, so that is elicited in the churning electronic undercurrent that has suddenly appeared, in contrast and cross-reference to the slow keen of vocal. This requires precision control at the desk; who else could it be other than Andrea Gobbi?
ORGANIC / ARTIFICE MASH
A second instrumental, Dark, flutters into jittery life. Whistle, fiddle and pipes at the fore, the mash between the organic and the artifice feels entirely normal. The melody lives and breathes, at least to my ears, island life and highland magic. Brown drops back by to add some rippling piano, before, with a few well-chosen chords, he puts the tune to bed. Not that you should feel ready for a similar fate, as Duncan next leads what sound like a march, Sinclair at her side, laying down a muscular rhythm. ‘Ille Dhuinn, it is called, my Gaelic insufficient to confirm the impression. Aitken and co. lay down their trademark swirl and symphony.
MacLeod really must get a further mention, the electronic heart of the band, the way he blends the differing constituent parts little short of astonishing. He is also, when required, the guitarist. Outside of INYAL, he has an impressive solo sideline as Lumison, encompassing dusty synths, tape hiss and live instrumentation, to forge a, for want of a better word, a moody jazztronica, awash with the more traditional tonal hues of the Hebrides, his island home. I wasn’t aware before, but I am now!
EXPECTATION FOR MORE
It is to Brown that the band turn again, for the closer, For Eamonn. Administering a slow tumble of notes, ghostly strings, both real and not, float up, like mist, above his playing. There is a sense of something about to happen, but, when it does, it is more by subtraction than addition. Too simple by far would it have been to throw in a pipe finale or a fiddle crescendo, the track holding that sense of expectation, to then let it then just trickle away, leaving the listener hungry for more. Oof!
WHELMS APLENTY
I know I’m going to be accused of too much egg and too much purple, but this album is an absolute monster. Too soon to consider an album of the year? I’ll be honest, the first INYAL release, all those years ago, had far fewer whelms than hoped for or anticipated. This time they have not only nailed it, making the genre their own, they have stapled and superglued that fact to the wall. Niteworks may be gone, but, at this moment and this instant, it is clear to see who has their crown. More fool I for missing the launch, last week, where all 10 players featured here, plus Ali Hutton on additional whistles, reportedly took Glasgow by storm.
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INYAL: Website