Album Review: Macmaster Hay - Love and Reason (Self Release)

The very idea of a collaboration featuring little other than harp and drums at first seems a little adventurous, but this new album by Mary Macmaster, one of the world's leading innovators of the harp and it's various cousins, including the clarsach and the Camac elecro harp, together with notable drummer and percussionist Donald Hay, LOVE AND REASON comes over as a sort of Celtic Meeting of the Spirits, with some delightfully inventive arrangements and a surprisingly full sound, bearing in mind that there's just the two of them.

Loaded with sound effects and sampling, Donald Hay and Tim Matthew's brilliant production allows each of the instruments to be heard, probably as well as they can be heard, Mary very much at the top end and Donald very much at the bottom, with a variety of samples floating somewhere in the ether; ever present but never cluttering or cloying. Those who are familiar with Mary Macmaster's work over the past couple of decades with Sileas and The Poozies, will already be well aware of her credentials as a first rate harpist, but in this setting, we are hearing a different side to her playing, which leans very much towards a more ambient new age feel, despite the album's mix of traditional and contemporary material. Donald Hay's command over the technical side of drums and percussion and their ongoing relationship with sampling gadgetry, helps make each individual piece of music special here, and gives the album as a whole, its heart. It's little wonder that he is in such demand as a percussionist by the likes of Jerry Douglas, Aly Bain and Kris Drever.

The songs included are equally divided between Gaelic and English and on the whole, carry a melancholy air, particularly on the achingly sullen Weary, which is beautifully fused with The Dresden Reel. If ever music was made to convey a mood, then this one hits the nail on the head.

On the sleeve notes Mary reveals that Soraidh Leis Bhreacan Ur was learned on a bus in Germany, whilst she and Cathy Ann MacPhee were laughing and singing their way around the autobahns. I wonder whether it's coincidental then that Thograinn Thograinn, has me unavoidably thinking in terms of Karen Matheson singing over a Kraftwerk backing track? A crazy thought granted, but Macmaster and Hay make this work incredibly well. Pibroch, subtitled Lament For The Children, sounds for all intents and purposes like an accompanying audio track to a post modern installation in Tate Modern, contending for the Turner Prize, with its slightly disturbing gurgling baby sampling over some trance-like harp wizardry.

If the album does sometimes come across as a Celtic Tontos Expanding Headband, then it is with the song writing talents of Edinburgh's Sandy Wright, that brings it back to Earth. LOVE AND REASON includes two songs from his pen, the plaintive Mary Cullen, which was written about Wright's grandmother, who coincidentally shares the same name as Macmaster's own mother and the second, Shining Star, a song so good, it hasn't only found its way onto this album, but also onto the eagerly awaited second solo album by Kris Drever, MARK THE HARD EARTH, due for release soon.

Although LOVE AND REASON comes over very much as experimental music, I would rather think in terms of it having more to do with the organic development of Scottish music. So much more interesting than straight forward strict tempo jigs, reels and strathspeys. It's the kind of record that deserves to be played over and over again and upon each new listen, something new is almost guaranteed to come from it.