Landless - Luireach (2024)

The success of Lankum's 2023 album False Lankum, along with Ye Vagabonds' collaboration with boygenius, brought international attention to the creative exploration of Irish folk traditions in their Dublin community of bands. Like Lankum and Ye Vagabonds, Landless collaborate with producer/engineer John "Spud" Murphy, who plays in the band ØXN with Radie Peat from Lankum, and whose mixes combine ideas from experimental electronic music with this timeless material.

Landless's 2018 debut Bleaching Bones relied only on the group's beautiful a cappella singing. Murphy's mixes drenched their beautiful alto and soprano voices in lush, resonant reverberation that gave the songs movement and subtly emphasized their structure.

While Landless's amazing singing is again central on Lúireach, it is now augmented by minimal, thoughtful instrumental accompaniment. Whether played by band members or guests, including Cormac Mac Diarmada from Lankum, these instruments mostly contribute drones that sustain and evolve, and in doing so provide structure. Mixes that rely on drastic reverberation and modulation partly obscure the acoustic origins of pipe organ, fiddle, trombone, and shruti box. Opener "Newry Highwayman" begins with a minute of voices, and then gradually builds layers of trombone and fiddle drones against the repeating melody. Ruth Clinton's pipe organ on "Lúireach Bhríde" is grounding with its deep bass frequencies, and the higher notes from the organ and Mac Diarmada's strings emphasize the existing dynamics of the vocal arrangement.

Unlike the drones that accompany most songs, Clinton layers simple percussive piano patterns in a beautiful arrangement on "The Fisherman's Wife." Her clavichord melodies that open and close "The Hag" frame the song's a cappella body.

Just as Méabh Meir's playing of an Indian shruti box and Tibetan singing bowls integrate instruments from different folk traditions, some of the material also originates in other countries. The shruti box appears on the album's closing song "Ej Husari." This Slovakian folk song, first recorded by Dorota Hrašková, retains Landless's obvious Irish origins in the foreground, while combining them with traditional elements of Indian and Slovakian music, and modern electronic influences.

TRACKLIST

1. Landless - The Newry Highwayman
2. Landless - Blackwaterside
3. Landless - Lúireach Bhríde
4. landless - The Fisherman's Wife
5. Landless - The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry
6. landless - Death and the Lady
7. Landless - The Hag
8. Landless - My Lagan Love
9. Landless - The Wounded Hussar
10. Landless - Ej Husári