Harmonica

Harp players don't come much better than this. Mick Kinsella navigates a path with the harmonica through rough and smooth, a veritable songline through the geography of is own choosing.

Harmonica is Kinsella playing the land, the sky and the sea into existence, much as aboriginal people have done across the length and breadth of their homeland for millennia. 'Canyon Moonrise', 'Tiarna Mhuigheo', 'Paddy's Rambles Through The Park' and 'the Leipzig Waltz' provide the highlights. With much of the arrangements relying on the barest of adornment, his virtuosity is firmly placed beneath the spotlight throughout.

Accompanied by the thinnest of percussion and guitar, Kinsella holds his own effortlessly.

And how he basks effortlessly in it. 'Japuneasy' stretches octaves and acceptable norms of melody like chewing gum, defying expectations of what the harp can and can't do. 'Canyon Moonrise' is a somnolent canter through the landscape many of us eulogised while watching The High Chaparral and The Virginian. You can almost feel the heat reflected by every shimmy and slide of the harp.

Then there's his cover of Rory McLeod's 'Take Me Home', a sprightly funk-step that whispers of eastern European cobblestoned streets and Carmen Miranda pelvic tilts, culture clashing and colluding gorgeously.

If ever there was a collection that marries past and present, tradition and innovation, this is it. Kinsella seems to be able to inhabit a space that's of his own making, and yet imbued of the spirit of the past.

Small budget, big vision, breathtaking vista. A must.