An t-Oileán Aerach

THE DUGGANS: “Trad” (Cló Iar-Chonnachta); JOHNNY CONNOLLY: “An t-Oileán Aerach” (Cló Iar-Chonnachta); KEVIN BURKE, JOHNNY CUNNINGHAM AND CHRISTIAN LEMAITRE: “The Celtic Fiddle Festival” (Green Linnet)

HAVE YOU ever had immersion therapy? Floated in a dark tank with not a ray of light or a wave of sound to orientate your numbed mind? It’s like William Hurt in Altered States – metamorphosis is a serious possibility here, and with Bill Bixby only a week in the grave, the mantle can safely be passed on. So . . . don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

If you’re wondering what that was all about, don’t fret, I’m a tad confused myself. With melodeons and accordions spinning round my brain to beat the band, my mind state’s been irreparably altered – and there’s no going back.

First of all, there’s the Duggan Family out of Galway and by all accounts, a veritable houseful of musical prodigies versed in the tradition of fiddle and flute, banjo and accordion ever since they were knee high to a bodhrán. The most striking thing about the piece is the cover, a beautiful Bláithin-like brush stroke of a whistle player by Gertrude Degenhardt.

Between the cover there’s a rake of reels, jigs and airs to match anything heard in Tipperary this year. The tradition is the tailor, the tunes the cloth and the musicians the keepers of the flame. It’s a sound that rests uneasily on these ears, the accordion in particular recalling some nightmarish Sunday afternoon feiseanna in Scartaglen, where music from hell was applauded and bedecked with medals as though it were in danger of being wiped out without an annual backslapping ceremony.

It’s music for traditionalists who intend to keep to the letter of Michael Coleman and James Morrison’s laws. Music for Scartaglen, but a mystery to these ears, I’m afraid.

Johnny Connolly is a man with a mission on a melodeon. Another traditionalist, though this time with an eye to the prevailing winds of improvisation, he’s a peddlar of some fine tunes siphoned from the repertoire of Joe Cooley, Michael Coleman and their ilk.

An t-Oileán Aerach’s finest moment comes smack bang in the middle of the album with the spiffing reel, ‘Jenny’s Chickens’, a piece I first laid ears on in the kitchen of a youth hostel in Dunfanaghy last summer when it was given a fair airing by a precise German fiddler who was transported to another plane amid the chase. A beautiful piece, it swings hither and to and captures the imagination in a net of the finest mesh. A lightly decorated alternative to the squeeze box pyrotechnics currently en vogue – for the ear ably trained in deciphering its code.

The Celtic Fiddle Festival is a different kettle of pla(i)ce altogether. Peopled by three fine fiddlers bringing a plethora of styles to bear on what can only be described as a frighteningly eclectic bunch of tunes, it’s a sly nod in the direction of commercial appeal, and why not? If fiddlers three make for more attractive corporate packaging then so be it – what matters ultimately is the journey of the music to the ear and heart. And many’s the heart that’ll be churned to pulp by this kindly offering.

Kevin Burke, he of Patrick St. and Open House, is long known for his style of playing that’s articulate and consummate, if occasionally betraying a tendency to cruise control. Johnny Cunningham, a Scot and member of Silly Wizard lends the most northern Celtic bloodline to the proceedings and Christian Lemaitre is the Breton traditionalist who urges the pitch on a rising parabola that sits easily alongside the others’ (dramatically different) native sounds.

‘Mist Covered Mountains Of Home’ is Cunningham’s remembrance of a childhood lullaby lovingly caressed back to life with a dream-tinged quality. ‘Music For A Found Harmonium’ is a tridentine treatment of that classic piece from The Penguin Café Orchestra that breathes with less zest than when it was aired at the Bringing It All Back Home Tour – but you can’t have everything, I guess. Paired with a sultry Venezuelan waltz, ‘La Partida’, it sneaks in, out and around the house with a dexterity born of a fine sensibility and an ability to push the outside of its envelope more than once.

The Celtic Fiddle Festival is a conglomerate of styles and stories that owe their parentage to a common Celtic bloodline that’s flowing unhindered by the cholesterol-clogging effects of sophisticated orchestrations. Modestly embellished by John McGann’s guitar, it’s an album to savour after dinner when the belly’s full and the thirst’s sated.

A reassuring nod that all’s well with the world.

• Siobhán Long