Monkey! OST

As well as being an incredibly visual, unashamedly theatrical live band, Kila have always been magically adept at opening that corridor between the deep past and the right now, sounding both rooted in traditions older than time itself, and as modern, immediate and unknowable as next week.

Who better then to soundtrack British kids’ theatre company The Young Vic’s production of Monkey!, a play based on a 5th century Chinese legend of a heroic simian who goes on a journey to enlightenment, armed only with his friends, his sense of adventure and (naturally) his magic monkey stick. In Kila’s ancient/modern hands, Monkey is half folk-tale protagonist, half videogame superstar.

Unbelievably complex, full of fun and imagination, and so evocative you can practically see the action before your eyes – using gongs, finger-bells and koto as well as their more usual bodhran, percussion, flute and fiddle – the only thing Monkey! lacks is this: it leaves you wishing for every song to be much, much longer, turned from a score fragment into a fully-fledged creature (as each clearly has that potential).

Best bits include the kid-nightmare-inducing ‘Yama And Friends’ (ominous growling from Old Yama, King of Death; piteous yelping from his hostage children); the tightrope-and-thunderclap suspense-song that is ‘Walk of Peril’; the fiddle minuet of ‘A Waltz to Eastern Heaven’ and (not least) Ronan O’Snodaigh’s amusingly chest-thumping monologue as the redoubtable ‘handsome Monkey King’ himself (‘The Monkey Song’).