Composer, cellist and uilleann piper Neil Martin of West Ocean String Quartet writes for Culture about their new album, Atlantic Edge, a record that takes the west of Ireland for inspiration, with memorable results...
In January 2018 we began to mull over the notion of making a new album, looking ahead to mark the 20th anniversary of the quartet's birth in November 1999. An Indigo Sky, our fourth album, had been released back in 2013 so it really was time to do something.
All sorts of ideas were floated – a "best of" compilation, or maybe an album featuring some of the guests we’d collaborated with over the years (Matt Molloy, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, Brian Kennedy, Liam O’Flynn, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Christy Moore, Eimear Quinn…). There was also a lot of material I’d written and arranged over the years that hadn’t been recorded that was still in the potential mix.
Watch: West Ocean String Quartet play The Lark in Clear Air
The idea was parked for a good while, and then after several more months of occasional parley, Seamus sparked the idea of an album of music from or about the west of Ireland. That endlessly rich seam of music has forever offered up a treasure chest of irresistible gems, tunes and airs hewn from right along the western seaboard, from Munster to Ulster, all counties covered. Those noble airs and songs with their glorious poetry – Slán le Máigh, Aisling Gheal, Port na bPúcaí, 'Níon a’ Bhaoilligh – all hugely inspirational and stunningly beautiful. Arranging them was no heavy bundle – nothing but sheer pleasure in seeking out new ways of sharing them without sacrificing any of their core. And ditto with dance tunes, equally unique – Alisdrum’s March, The Walls of Liscarroll, powerhouse reels associated with Sligo, tunes composed by Paddy Fahey and tunes from Goodman’s collections - tunes without end, amen.
Sadly in 2018, we lost two of the most significant musicians Ireland ever produced – Liam O’Flynn and Mícheál Ó Súilleabhain, long-time friends and collaborators both. It was wholly fitting to mark them on this album. I composed The Boy in the Glen for Liam and arranged Slán le Máigh in memoriam to Mícheál. Once all the material was selected and arranged, we got together for a number of concentrated rehearsal periods in the summer of 2019 – never the easiest with a quartet whose busy members live in Dublin (Ken), Sligo (Niamh), Donegal (Seamus) and myself in Belfast. But all happened and the selection of material had a thread that was heartsome.
With such technical advancement in recording over recent years and the excellent Ciarán Byrne engineering, we opted to record the album in early November, 2019 in Ken’s house near Dublin. This immediately makes the whole recording experience a more organic and relaxed affair – you’re in a welcoming home, no pressures of the clock, no overdubs. All done and dusted in three days. There is something deeply rewarding about that - of course it’s not easy, but it’s focused and it’s all made within the one emotional breath. We made music.
We left tweaking final mixes until February, got liner notes together and sent the album off for manufacture in March – we made the Covid-19 cut-off deadline by two days, as it happened. It would have been deeply sickening not have gotten the product made until potentially into 2021. An April/May dream of a launch tour along west of Ireland, a year in the planning, we did lose to the virus.
So once the world rights itself and we can perform live again, it’s to the west we’ll first head.
Atlantic Edge is out now - find out more here.
