The roots of Dublin-based Irish/ Finnish trio Slow Moving Clouds are based firmly in the traditional folk music of their respective home cultures. Yet that’s just scratching the surface, as their largely instrumental driven material also owes much to the drone of the Velvet Underground and post-rock, leading to comparisons with both Icelandic heroes Sigur Ros as much as Irish supergroup The Gloaming.
The latest album from Danny Diamond (fiddle), Kevin Murphy (cello), and Finnish instrument maker Aki (nyckelharpa) is Starfall. Released on the new People label/ platform, it sees the trio increase the original content for a moving and atmospheric collection that (perhaps understandably) has attracted such inquisitive and open fans as The National and Bon Iver.
Prior to their appearance at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday 23 October 2018 – as part of the venues Autumn Season of Irish artists – Danny speaks to What’s On …
There's a lot going on in Starfall, stylistically. How would you describe your sound, and the elements that make it up?
Our sound is rooted in Nordic and Irish traditional music. To bring the two traditions together we needed to create a new sound-world which was broadly influenced by their sounds but which stood apart from both traditions. We ended up incorporating ideas from experimental, post-rock, electronic and even Baroque music, alongside our folk roots. Then we reworked Irish and Finnish music to fit this world, and by extension fit with each other. If that makes sense! Once we established our sound and our way of working, our music has gradually been evolving from arranging traditional material into writing our own songs and instrumentals from scratch.
The four traditional tunes you've arranged - Ash Plant, Downfall Of Paris, Trin, Droghedy - where are they from? And how did you approach them?
Ash Plant is an old tune which was recorded by the great American folklorist Alan Lomax on a collecting trip to Ireland in 1952. We were commissioned to arrange the tune for a TV documentary on Lomax's Irish trip Lomax in Éirinn which premiered last month on Irish national TV; Downfall Of Paris goes back at least as far as the French Revolution and has military origins, moving from the French army to the British army to folk traditions across Britain and Ireland. I love how folk music functions as a kind of peoples' history as well as a musical form; and Droghedy is similarly old, at least early 19th century, and was collected from mummers in Co. Wexford in the southeast of Ireland. I'm not sure about the origins of Trin, all I know is that it's a polska from Finland! We drastically altered all of them, writing new melodic sections and/ or removing sections, creating intros and outros, shaping the traditional music for contemporary listeners. We don't treat the old tunes as sacred, rather as an incredibly rich raw material from which new music can be created.
Which any other artists / composers / acts do you feel an affinity with?
Artists we admire include My Bloody Valentine, Efterklang, Mica Levi, and Irish fiddler Martin Hayes. Generally people who work in hard-to-classify spaces between genres, making music with emotional resonance. We would also see ourselves as part of a wave of new folk/ acoustic music coming out of Ireland at the moment, including acts such as Lankum, Lisa O'Neill, Ye Vagabonds, Landless etc.
The album's released via People, which is led by Justin Vernon and The National's Dessner brothers - can you tell us a bit about their role, and the 'People platform'?
The People project is an inspirational new artist-led model for making and sharing music. It's an honour for us to be involved in the collective and to have our music released on the digital platform. Simply, People have released our album online, filling the role of a traditional label, but without the corporate structure of a label and with the bulk of the income generated passing directly to the artist. It's one of their first releases so it's all very much a work-in-progress, but the potential for their model is endless. They also facilitated an amazing collaborative residency and festival in Berlin in August where we worked with a mind-boggling range of artists from Irish hip-hop group Rusangano Family to singer-songwriters Jenny Lewis And Gordi, to German techno DJ BoysNoize.
You've been touring with Swan Lake - Loch na hEala, an acclaimed internationally touring adaptation of the ballet set in contemporary Ireland. How did you approach composing for the project?
The work on Swan Lake was totally collaborative. We brought in pre-existing music from our individual and collective repertoires, which was then reshaped to suit the needs of the piece. We also improvised with the dancers and actors in the company as part of the creative process, guided and shaped by the writer/director Michael Keegan-Dolan. As the show came together over a couple of months, pieces of music began to emerge from these improvs, some of which found a home both in Swan Lake, and some also now feature in our live set.
Any further plans for scores / soundtracks?
Nothing solid at the moment, although we would be very open to the idea … our way of working does seem particularly well suited to collaborations, and we would love to have an opportunity to do some soundtrack work.
What are your plans for the future?
For the moment the focus for the band is touring in support of our new album. Aki and I also play in the touring band with Swan Lake, and all three of us individually work across a range of music / art collaborations alongside our involvement with Slow Moving Clouds - so there is generally a lot of interesting work on the horizon for 2019!
Slow Moving Clouds are at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday 23 October 2018.
The roots of Dublin-based Irish/ Finnish trio Slow Moving Clouds are based firmly in the traditional folk music of their respective home cultures. Yet that’s just scratching the surface, as their largely instrumental driven material also owes much to the drone of the Velvet Underground and post-rock, leading to comparisons with both Icelandic heroes Sigur Ros as much as Irish supergroup The Gloaming.
The latest album from Danny Diamond (fiddle), Kevin Murphy (cello), and Finnish instrument maker Aki (nyckelharpa) is Starfall. Released on the new People label/ platform, it sees the trio increase the original content for a moving and atmospheric collection that (perhaps understandably) has attracted such inquisitive and open fans as The National and Bon Iver.
Prior to their appearance at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday 23 October 2018 – as part of the venues Autumn Season of Irish artists – Danny speaks to What’s On …
There's a lot going on in Starfall, stylistically. How would you describe your sound, and the elements that make it up?
Our sound is rooted in Nordic and Irish traditional music. To bring the two traditions together we needed to create a new sound-world which was broadly influenced by their sounds but which stood apart from both traditions. We ended up incorporating ideas from experimental, post-rock, electronic and even Baroque music, alongside our folk roots. Then we reworked Irish and Finnish music to fit this world, and by extension fit with each other. If that makes sense! Once we established our sound and our way of working, our music has gradually been evolving from arranging traditional material into writing our own songs and instrumentals from scratch.
The four traditional tunes you've arranged - Ash Plant, Downfall Of Paris, Trin, Droghedy - where are they from? And how did you approach them?
Ash Plant is an old tune which was recorded by the great American folklorist Alan Lomax on a collecting trip to Ireland in 1952. We were commissioned to arrange the tune for a TV documentary on Lomax's Irish trip Lomax in Éirinn which premiered last month on Irish national TV; Downfall Of Paris goes back at least as far as the French Revolution and has military origins, moving from the French army to the British army to folk traditions across Britain and Ireland. I love how folk music functions as a kind of peoples' history as well as a musical form; and Droghedy is similarly old, at least early 19th century, and was collected from mummers in Co. Wexford in the southeast of Ireland. I'm not sure about the origins of Trin, all I know is that it's a polska from Finland! We drastically altered all of them, writing new melodic sections and/ or removing sections, creating intros and outros, shaping the traditional music for contemporary listeners. We don't treat the old tunes as sacred, rather as an incredibly rich raw material from which new music can be created.
Which any other artists / composers / acts do you feel an affinity with?
Artists we admire include My Bloody Valentine, Efterklang, Mica Levi, and Irish fiddler Martin Hayes. Generally people who work in hard-to-classify spaces between genres, making music with emotional resonance. We would also see ourselves as part of a wave of new folk/ acoustic music coming out of Ireland at the moment, including acts such as Lankum, Lisa O'Neill, Ye Vagabonds, Landless etc.
The album's released via People, which is led by Justin Vernon and The National's Dessner brothers - can you tell us a bit about their role, and the 'People platform'?
The People project is an inspirational new artist-led model for making and sharing music. It's an honour for us to be involved in the collective and to have our music released on the digital platform. Simply, People have released our album online, filling the role of a traditional label, but without the corporate structure of a label and with the bulk of the income generated passing directly to the artist. It's one of their first releases so it's all very much a work-in-progress, but the potential for their model is endless. They also facilitated an amazing collaborative residency and festival in Berlin in August where we worked with a mind-boggling range of artists from Irish hip-hop group Rusangano Family to singer-songwriters Jenny Lewis And Gordi, to German techno DJ BoysNoize.
You've been touring with Swan Lake - Loch na hEala, an acclaimed internationally touring adaptation of the ballet set in contemporary Ireland. How did you approach composing for the project?
The work on Swan Lake was totally collaborative. We brought in pre-existing music from our individual and collective repertoires, which was then reshaped to suit the needs of the piece. We also improvised with the dancers and actors in the company as part of the creative process, guided and shaped by the writer/director Michael Keegan-Dolan. As the show came together over a couple of months, pieces of music began to emerge from these improvs, some of which found a home both in Swan Lake, and some also now feature in our live set.
Any further plans for scores / soundtracks?
Nothing solid at the moment, although we would be very open to the idea … our way of working does seem particularly well suited to collaborations, and we would love to have an opportunity to do some soundtrack work.
What are your plans for the future?
For the moment the focus for the band is touring in support of our new album. Aki and I also play in the touring band with Swan Lake, and all three of us individually work across a range of music / art collaborations alongside our involvement with Slow Moving Clouds - so there is generally a lot of interesting work on the horizon for 2019!
Slow Moving Clouds are at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, on Tuesday 23 October 2018.
For more information on Warwick Arts Centre’s Irish Season, which is part of Culture Ireland’s GB18 campaign, see: warwickartscentre.co.uk/series/the-irish-season-autumn-2018
By Dave Freak