Awen Ensemble – Cadair Idris

In folklore, anyone spending a night on Cadair Idris mountain will wake up either a poet or a mad person. Actually, the same has been said of anyone following jazz as a vocation. Thus, the Leeds-based septet Awen Ensemble chose to combine both prospects for their debut outing.

Cadair Idris lies in the Eryri national park, previously known as Snowdonia. Various tales associate it with giants, princes, battles, bards and bottomless lakes. Awen Ensemble, founded by students at the Leeds College of Music, has Welsh, Irish and Scottish roots in its lineup. Throw all this into the mix and we have a band first championed by Gilles Peterson back in 2019.

This album tracks a woman who roughs it overnight on Cadair Idris seeking personal growth. Awen Ensemble’s vibe throughout is one of quiet apprehension. Their music is more hair-stroking than hair-raising. In other words, there’s less of jazz’s surging urban energy, more of a flower-powered rusticity. Which ain’t to suggest this lot can’t swing it, just that they choose their moments to go bopping and make an impact. Think roughly Keith Jarrett’s more pastoral compositions for ECM meets Pentangle’s reunion classic Open The Door (Spindrift, 1985).

Deuwn i mi is a rather leaden opener, with its spoken Welsh lyric over muted brass, rustling vox and tingling cymbals. Happily, what follows displays a band capable of sublime grandeur.

Idris brings a more united front – the guitar concise and fluttering, the trumpet in a tender place, as singer Amy Clark’s scatting drips like honey into a bruised ear. This dark stay on the mountain already sounds more like a season of sunlight and festivity.

Unsettled finds Clark sighing, ‘Where can I find peace of mind/Dry this blood that’s on my thigh’ over the mellow ensemble, her voice a soft staccato. A bodhrán knocks shyly into the clinking Fender Rhodes keyboard solo, not two instruments you often find coupled. So is this band merely offering a crude compromise of styles in a contrived jumble? At times they teeter on the brink of it, but Clark’s sultry yet supernatural singing is the rivet. She might just be the British vocal find of 2024, her voice roaming freely between jazz and folk worlds like a guiding spirit.

Rhyd is an instrumental where the flugel treads gingerly and random solos are unified by subtle percussion that swells or subsides accordingly. It’s like a warm and wafting breeze, the soundtrack for lying in a meadow while letting your mind wander. This album’s concept might have had a more ice-bound air in the hands of a Lankum or Burd Ellen, draped in dripping fog and piercing laments. But that ain’t the Awen way, and Ionawr sees Clark make a rosy return to pick up the narrative. ‘A snowflake lands on the tip of her freckled nose’, she croons as the guitar fingerpicks a soulful waltz until the piece kicks into a steady gallop, pursued by balmy horns.

Then on the tranquil bluesy If I Fall, Clark’s radiant voice makes threats of dark clouds and bed monsters sound like items in a goodie bag. Zorny, meanwhile, has noirish nightmarish brass to evoke a darksome landscape, wreathed in shadows. The heroine’s isolation and endurance are, perhaps, felt most deeply here. But all ends well with Upon Leaving the Dream as our narrator wakens to the full swing of life and music, a joyful morning. The sax struts in, Clark sounds delirious, drum skins are whipped, leaving a pristine guitar passage for the coda.

Cadair Idris presents proof that not only wooden instruments conjure a response to wilderness lands or scenic rivers. Woven from modern jazz repertoires with a mythic folk essence, this is an audacious and promising debut.