Amanda Whiting, The Liminality of Her, First Word ***1/2

Feeling chipper: Have we all reached peak harp it's worth pondering given a contemporary fascination in the wake of a very successful agenda setting shift in the favour of the Volvo Estate boot filling instrument from the likes of Brandee Younger …

Published: 26 Mar 2024. Updated: 32 days.

Feeling chipper: Have we all reached peak harp it's worth pondering given a contemporary fascination in the wake of a very successful agenda setting shift in the favour of the Volvo Estate boot filling instrument from the likes of Brandee Younger and Alina Bzhezhinska and new generations coming to the music of Alice Coltrane. Hardly because there's plenty left in the tank given how many releases keep rolling out. The Harper Trio last year delivered one of 2023's best and even more recently Younger's turn on Lizz Wright's 'Your Love' just released is an absolute gem. Happy days, celestially speaking, are here again. Enter Welshwoman Amanda Whiting with singer Peach, flautist Chip Wickham, bassist Aidan Thorne, drummer Jon Reynolds and percussionist Mark O’Connor (whose banging pièce de résistance on The Liminality of Her happens to be 'No Turning Back'). It's a loungey as much as spiritual listen so not on heavy rotation down the ashram just yet or possibly ever. The said Peach's vocal on 'Intertwined' with the best will in the world remains a tad ethereal. Better is when a chunky riff from Thorne on 'Liminal' livens things up a bit. Pity there wasn't more use made of Wickham overall. Whiting's playing style reminds us of Tori Handsley circa As We Stand. Amanda Whiting, photo: Bandcamp

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Shadowlands, Ombres, BMC ****

Shadowlands l-r: Kit Downes, Lauren Kinsella, Robin Fincker Interestingly crafted and thought through repertoire: - so striking the roads less travelled taken on the plainsong flavoured Ombres beginning with a stirring cover of Dolly and Shirley …

Published: 25 Mar 2024. Updated: 30 days.

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Shadowlands l-r: Kit Downes, Lauren Kinsella, Robin Fincker

Interestingly crafted and thought through repertoire: - so striking the roads less travelled taken on the plainsong flavoured Ombres beginning with a stirring cover of Dolly and Shirley Collins' Love, Death and the Lady (1970) traditional English folk classic 'Death and the Lady.'

Irish singer Lauren Kinsella digs deep and so knowingly drinking from such a well of hearty inspiration.

For saxophone/clarinet, piano/organ and voice - no drums needed - is the way the music that Shadowlands play fans out.

French saxist Robin Fincker known for his work with Vincent Courtois joins Kit Downes and Kinsella far from home recording these adventurous and largely successfully rendered interpretations at the Opus Jazz Club in Budapest in late-January last year.

Fincker, Aunt Molly Jackson material - the churchified 'Roll on Buddy' - free improv on 'Toybox' where Kinsella moves into a more experimental concatenation of an exercise, Romany singer Levi Smith's 'Georgie' heard on My Father's The King of the Gypsies in the 1990s, Molly Drake's 'Woods in May' and 'The First Day' eventually extend the folkie theme, the timbral insights from Fincker's clarinet playing carefully deployed for poor Georgie. A further generous portion of free improv on 'Ech' and another Fincker tune that forms the title track complete the selections. If you appreciated June Tabor, Iain Ballamy and Huw Warren in their acclaimed grouping heard on 2013's Quercus discover this today. But if anything Ombres is at heart far more experimental and yet you can't easily or productively generalise the nature of its impact. Better by far instead to absorb the rich vibrations of it all truly, madly, deeply - and often. The moving pleading that Kinsella conveys so well for the life of poor Georgie is a definite highlight.