Throaty traditional Ukrainian music with Ukrainian singer guests that features a commission inspired by an ancient Irish alphabet, Haivka was recorded in Belfast and Dublin and sits firmly in world music territory or as art music a classical audience might be drawn to.
It is serious and yet not stuffily worthy because, for instance, there is a ferocious dance fervour that loosens its girdle in acute contrast elsewhere to the dirge-like lamentations of the singers, the fiddles and circular metrical shapes of the musical construction drawing the listener in from the chillier extremities of the music in all its impenetrability unless that is you are immersed deeply in Ukrainian culture. Subjects of the songs traverse nature and natural elements, seasonal cycle, rituals, and somewhat mordant dreamings. Significant input arrives from Ukrainian electro-acoustic composer Alla Zagaykevych.
Fans of saxophonist/arranger Nick Roth who reworked The Wasteland at the Happy Days Beckett festival, and the guiding light behind the engagingly eclectic long established Yurodny, will be intrigued of course once more by this latest folk-flavoured electro-acoustic departure and globetrotting musical wanderlust. For those intrepid journeyers and less partisan students of his music after first blush and the shock of the new they too will be stimulated certainly by the more open improvised-sounding sections that pique a jazz listener’s interest most if only obliquely.
Stephen Graham
Released on 8 April. Listen to a track from the album, above. Yurodny play Steambox in Dublin on the evening of launch day