Irish alternative trad/folk trio Rattling Ark announce their debut album, Top of a Mountain, due for release on 19 June 2026, and share its first single, Leprechaun, alongside an accompanying video.
The group is led by cellist and composer Kevin Murphy of Slow Moving Clouds, whose Starfall was reviewed in these pages back in 2018 in which they were compared to fusion traditionalists The Gloaming. He is joined by long-time collaborator Thomas Haugh, who works across zithers, percussion and electronics, and Lizzi Murtough, who contributes cello, shruti box, keyboards and vocals. Guest musician Aki, also of Slow Moving Clouds, features on nyckelharpa and violyra (an experimental string instrument of his own design).
Rooted in traditional forms but shaped by experimental approaches, Top of a Mountain draws on influences ranging from the acoustic interplay of Pentangle to the darker textures of The Haxan Cloak and the contemporary folk sound of the aforementioned The Gloaming. While the cello is rarely at the centre of traditional Irish music, it takes a leading role here — Murphy uses it to carry jigs, reels and polkas while building layered arrangements that underpin a set of Irish and Scottish folk songs performed by himself and Murtough. Haugh’s instrumentation bridges acoustic and electronic worlds, adding texture without losing the music’s grounded feel.
Leprechaun is a traditional song Murphy got from the singing of Maggie Barry — a wry trickster ballad in which a narrator stumbles upon a leprechaun in the moonlight, seizes him in pursuit of the fairy purse, and is promptly outwitted. Rattling Ark’s version captures the madness and absurdity of Barry’s reading but adds a haunting surrealism by way of a throbbing bassline, avant-garde electronics and a deranged violyra solo from Aki. The track arrives with an astonishing video made by Brian Kelly, evoking the ancient form of shadow play that is thought to have originated in Central Asia-China or in India in the 1st millennium BCE.
Top of a Mountain will be launched at The Bello Bar, Dublin, on 19 June 2026, followed by a nationwide tour.
TOUR DATES
June 12 – Fennelly’s of Callan, Kilkenny
June 19 – BelloBar, Dublin
July 23 – University College Cork
January 23 (2027) – Seamus Ennis Arts Centre, Dublin
Bandcamp: https://rattlingark.bandcamp.com/track/leprechaun