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SOUNDS GOOD Chris Jones Andrew Lambert Finghín Li
ttle The Line Red Blood Cells & Righteousness [Strange Brew] David Holmes Blind On A Galloping Horse [Heavenly Recordings] The Line is Brian Dillon, though the party isn’t about him. Red Blood Cells & Righteousness, it quickly appears, is a rather audacious fifty-oddminute collaborative LP with no solo tracks from Dillon and bringing over a dozen musicians together. It seems doubly so reading the verbose liner notes, which gloss over savants like David Foster Wallace, Kae Tempest and G. W. F. Hegel. That sets off disquiet in this author, for whom mention of Hegel harks back the nadir of his undergraduate degree. Despite the sprawl of the above, the music lacks no purpose. Communion, featuring sisters Loah and Fehdah, oozes with convincing emotion and an exciting and confident breakdown. Others celebrate the diversity of the project with encouraging spontaneity – a bolt-from-the-blue rap track with MuRli and God Knows halfway comes to mind. Hero of Coincidence, with Pillow Queens’ Sarah Corcoran, tastefully weaves between noisy swarminess and clever bursts of beauty, while Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox joins the outstanding Niamh McGoldrick in The World Told No Lies, a song exemplary of the album’s most capable moments in its studied frenzy. No surprises there, nor complaints. It wouldn’t be fair not to add that almost all the production on the record is of a brilliant quality, with a maximalism that rarely evades attention. There are weaker moments on the record, but little feels like ‘filler’ aside from several voice-note interludes. A Hegelian Gesamtkunstwerk it is not, but there’s plenty nice about a record snapshotting the lively present moment in Irish music. FL It may be 15 years since 2008’s imperious The Holy Pictures, but it’s not as if Belfast polymath David Holmes has been twiddling his thumbs in the interim with at least a dozen film soundtracks, four albums with side project Unloved, production work and his idiosyncratic club series God’s Waiting Room are all evidence of that. Now he presents his monumental fifth solo album. Where The Holy Pictures was intensely personal, a love letter to his family, Blind On A Galloping Horse is outward-looking and impassioned, informed by the parlous state of post-Brexit Britain, endless refugee crises and injustice. As ever with Holmes, it’s a sonic banquet, offering skyscraping pop (It’s Over, If We Run Out Of Love), Suicideesque post-punk (I Laugh Myself To Sleep) and moments of exquisite beauty (You Will Know Me By The Smell Of Onions, a title inspired by Holmes’ late compadre Andrew Weatherall). The album plays like a movie, interspersed with voice notes from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, and the secret weapon is the vocals from newcomer Raven Violet - Holmes’s goddaughter - whose youthful energy drives the record. Best of all is Necessary Genius, with its roll call of artistic heroes from Samuel Beckett to another departed friend, Sinéad O’Connor; a reminder of the power of art to move and inspire us. It’s the most direct Holmes has ever sounded. Sure there’s anger and anguish, but the power of Blind On A Galloping Horse is its message of internationalism, unity and the hope of better things to come. CJ The Scratch Mind Yourself [Sony] In a year where Irish music has lost so many legendary voices, it’s incredibly heartening to hear the modern musical landscape around the country continue to push boundaries and break the rules. Lankum have painted epic historical portraits for the ages while Mary Wallopers continue to lead the trad revival in riotous style, but when it comes to rule breaking and abandoning tradition altogether there’s no one quite like The Scratch. On their second studio album, the Dublin quartet go further in their relentless quest to meld traditional folk with heavy metal, and the resulting sound is a gloriously chaotic fusion that is both addictive and unforgettable. Recorded in the appropriately named Black Mountain studio in Louth and produced by none other than James Vincent McMorrow, Mind Yourself finds The Scratch pursuing harder hooks and heavier melodies than previously dealt out on debut Couldn’t Give A Rats three years prior. Standouts Banshee and lead single Cheeky Bastard no doubt destined to become staples of the already notorious live shows which the band have made their name on since they arrived on the scene. Significantly though, it’s not all noise – as enjoyable as the early onslaught of sound may be, there are moments of reflection and vulnerability found on Mind Yourself which shine a light on The Scratch’s songwriting abilities in addition to their guitar chops, as Hole In The Ground and Shoes demonstrate the bands varied skill set in harmonic style. It all indicates the arrival of another trailblazing new sound in the Irish music sphere. AL totallydublin.ie less inky, more linky 45