Search - John McSherry, Donal O'Connor :: Tripswitch

Inventive, modern Irish instrumental music

Joe Sixpack -- Slipcue.com | ...in Middle America | 09/14/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a dazzling, consistently inventive all-instrumental Celtic set, branching off from the well-trod paths of traditional jigs and reels, but not so far as to alienate old fans or invite cries of "foul" from the anti-crossover contingent. Fans of instrumental trad music will want to check this out."

Experimental but also controlled Irish fusion

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 01/28/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"John McSherry started with his siblings in the pop-folk band Tamalin two decades ago. Dónal O'Connor comes from another Belfast musical family. On this collaboration, they seek, as Gearóid Mac Lochlainn puts it in his liner notes, "a sense of dimension and space that has been absent from a lot of trad experimentation and production." The Dónal Lunny type of production, as it may be called, has resulted in a surfeit of ornament, a rushed exertion, and a Phil Spector-meets-New Age swirling soundstage. For Mc Sherry on pipes and whistles and O'Connor on fiddle, they range over similar territory that many Celtic musicians have: around Ireland and off to Galicia, Asturias, and Castile. They incorporate these Spanish dance influences well, and on a jig and a set of "5/8 tunes," they avoid showmanship, blending in rather than standing out. This modesty characterizes this album. It asserts when it should, but tends to favor restraint and subtlety. Jigs, slow airs, slow reels, and a march are drawn from four primarily Northern Irish sources.



The album, only eight tracks but never feeling too short or too padded, ends with a song that mixes a new slip jig by John for his daughter with a tune recorded by Michael Coleman and adapted to another Sligo fiddling champion, Michael Gorman's version. The combination of recent and distant, Spanish and Irish makes for an album far more subtle than the "Santiago" collaboration by The Chieftains, and less rambunctious and eccentric than the Galician Celtic fusion of Milladoiro. As intended, Tripswitch slows the pace down from that usually heard on Spanish-Celtic projects, and the two musicians possess enough trust in their abilities to allow the musical arrangements to let the sensitivity and the soul of the sound take center stage, rather than flashy showmanship or swooning over-production. [...]"