Various – Locations
Ambedo Productions – 2021
Musicians, and others in the industry, have had to be inventive in finding ways to escape the constraints of the pandemic. Over six days last year, three Liverpool students drove across the North of England in a red Corsa filled with audio and film equipment to record six musical combinations in six different locations. The musicians are a pleasing mix of names, some of whom you are sure to know – Ríoghnach Connolly, Rosie Hood, Andy Cutting – and younger musicians based in Liverpool and Manchester. The resulting album offers an array of English and Irish traditional aural delights, rich with the sense of the very distinct places where the recordings were made.
The project began life as a dissertation for Ellen McGovern’s Audio Production degree, which led to Ellen (herself a flute and uilleann pipes player) setting up Ambedo Productions with fellow students Joe Punter and Kate Larner, and her sister Maeve, to share the music, video films of the recordings, and do more of the same. Their interest lies in investigating how the acoustics of unique environments influence performances and capturing musicians on audio and film in places that mean something notable to them.
The album opens with The Abbess, one of two tracks recorded with Andy Cutting (Leveret, Topette!!, Simpson/Cutting/Kerr) in Poole’s Cavern in Buxton, a show cave home to England’s longest stalactite. The tune was composed by Andy (and originally recorded on his self-titled 2010 solo album – reviewed here). It is remarkable how, in that space, Andy’s bright, as always thoroughly engaging, button accordion playing sounds like the largest pipe organ in a spacious Cathedral.
Rosie Hood, recently in the thick of this year’s pint-sized Towersey Festival and sometime organiser of the young people’s Hub workshops and performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival, recorded for the project at Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield (where Rosie lives). The building is a renovated Victorian nuts and bolts factory that has been used as a recording and performance space since 1997 and is seemingly the only conventional recording location of the six used for the project. Rosie’s two songs – The Swallow and The Blind Girl, both collected in Wiltshire where she hails from – were recorded in the building’s large and somewhat cluttered warehouse. Comparing the rendition here of The Blind Girl with the one on Rosie’s 2016 album The Beautiful & The Actual (reviewed here) shows how recording in unusual spaces can add extra layers, in this case adding depth and an almost ethereal edge to Rosie’s already magnificent singing.
The Williamson Tunnels, built in the early 19th century under the home and other properties in Edge Hill, Liverpool, owned by tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson are the setting for two sets of Irish traditional tunes from Liverpool banjo player Ciara Owens. Recorded in an enclosed, high tunnel, Ciara’s playing takes on a distant, almost ancient sound that could have been issued on a 78 disc in Michael Coleman’s day. For the occasion, Ciara was required to wear a white hard hat that bears a close resemblance to the one you can see in Village People’s video for YMCA! A family kitchen in Manchester was the down to earth location for two more sets of Irish traditional tunes from young players Orla Felcey (Wooden Flute), Maeve McGovern (Tenor Banjo) and Declan Dillon-Connolly (Bodhran). They describe it on their website: ‘While this may not be considered an acoustically interesting space compared to the more reverberant performance spaces, it holds significance to most musical households.’ Appropriately their tunes have that relaxed, unpolished sound of a welcoming Irish traditional session, adding a variation from the more ‘proper’ tracks.
It is when we get to the Holy Name Church, in city centre Manchester, with a session from Ríoghnach Connolly (HoneyFeet, The Breath, Band of Burns, Afro Celt Sound System, and BBC Folk Singer of the Year) and Ellis Davis (also HoneyFeet & Band of Burns), that this lovely collection soars. Built between 1869 and 1871, the church served a growing local population for generations, including Irish immigrant families who had escaped the famine. Since the 1960s, it has been surrounded by University of Manchester buildings. This particular location also has particular meaning for me, with a strong family connection: my mum was baptised there; her parents were married there; the name of her Uncle, who died after being wounded at Gallipoli in 1915, is one of 244 names on the First World War Memorial in the church, and; just a few years ago, my daughter played in her Sixth Form College’s Christmas Carol Concerts there.
We are fortunate to be indulged on Locations with three of the four tracks the project recorded with Ríoghnach (vocal and wooden flute) and Ellis (guitar): two songs and a set of tunes. There is unquestionably something very special about hearing that truly exceptional voice in that spacious, redolent building; they were obviously destined to be forgathered. The first song is fittingly Ag Chriost An Siol, an Irish hymn. Thugamar Féin An Samhradh Línn, the other vocal track, charmingly translates as ‘we brought the summer with us’ and is a song that Ríoghnach sings as a lullaby for her and Ellis’s daughter Macha. The fourth recording for the project, a song called Old Ardbó sung unaccompanied by Ríoghnach, didn’t make it onto the album, but it is an essential, stunning listen – the video is here.
Locations makes for an absorbing listen, with the variety of resonant places playing as much of a part as the performances. The young production team deserve high praise for overcoming what must have been a heap of technical and logistical challenges, peculiar to each location, to capture this set of winning, atmospheric songs and tunes. I’m left wondering where the red Corsa is heading next.
You can get the CD here. There is more information about the recording locations here, and all the video films of the performances can be viewed here.