Brendan Foreman penned this review.
Jonny Hardie and Gavin Marwick are best known as the fiddlers for Old Blind Dogs and Iron Horse, respectively. On this CD, the follow-up to another KRL release, Up in the Air, they join forces with a handful of guest musicians to showcase an excellent array of Celtic and Celtic-influenced music, not to mention a few stray pieces here and there.Playing alongside them are Leo McCann on the accordion, Eamon Coyne on banjo, Andy Thorburn on piano and keyboards, and Aaron Jones on bouzouki. What makes this ensemble and recording so remarkable is that rather than trying to replicate the standard ceili sound with most instruments playing the same tune, Hardie and Marwick have paid special attention to the arrangements, taking full advantage of the plethora of instruments and talent at their disposal. The resulting music of The Blue Lamp is smooth and rather sophisticated with several harmony parts and counterpoints often evident at one time or another during any given tune.
Although there are reels and jigs aplenty on this CD, there is nevertheless a nice variety of tunes here. “The Quiet Man” is a particularly lonely sounding strathspey penned by Jim Sutherland for John Martin, fiddle player with the group Ossian. The listener is also treated to several very pretty airs from the solo fiddle number “Marni Swanson of the Grey Coast” to the plaintive duet style of “Roderick Dhu.”
“Podoloy Hora” is a traditional Romanian tune. With its many layers of harmony and counterpoint, this tune is particularly well suited for the duo-playing of Hardie and Marwick. This tune is matched quite well with the pipe tune “The Good Drying” written by R. S. MacDonald.
Hardie and Marwick also find fertile ground with a Breton pipe song, “Suite Des Ridees De Pontivy.” The pair playfully bounce the melody of this in a call-and-response manner reminiscent of the music of that region.
Now, as for those reels and jigs, there are more than enough to satisfy the most demanding celtophile from the ultra traditional — the jigs “The Snuff Wife” and “Snug in a Blanket” — to the rather obscure — the New England hornpipe “President Garfield.” Included also is a rendition “The Siege of Delhi,” sounding wearily triumphant just as the siege it was written for.
There is also a sweet set of Irish tunes — “The King’s Favorite” and “McGuire’s Jig” — that complements the more dark flavor of the Scottish tunes here very nicely.
In a slight reversal of standard roles, Hardie and Marwick start the “Factory Smoke” set with the title tune, a hornpipe, played slowly, slightly languorously, followed by a slightly quicker strathspey “Fisher’s Rant.” Dougie MacLean’s intense hornpipe “The Search” finishes the set — long strokes of several backing fiddles make this a very moving piece.
The showcase of this CD, though, is the 4-part title composition, “The Blue Lamp Suite,” conveying a good night out at the pub. Beginning with the sprightly hopeful reel “Sandy Broon’s,” the suite turns more relaxed, slightly melancholy with a strathspey called “The Gallery.” A reel called “Last Orders” follows. This tune slowly picks up speed until Hardie and Marwick explode with the final full-speed-ahead reel “The Blue Lamp.”
As much as I enjoy the rough-and-ready characteristics of a lot of Celtic music, the “straight out of the bog” music as our Editor puts it, it’s a real delight to hear Celtic musicians create such beautiful and interesting music as Hardie and Marwick have done with The Blue Lamp.
(KRL, 1999)
