LAU - Derby Assembly Rooms - 2/12/2006

Earning themselves a slot of their own and jumping the queue in the FolkingAbout backlog, it is an absolute delight to report that with Lau, there is something new under the sun, and it's er, .... Scottish traditional music. No, stop, sit back down and wait a minute, listen! Lau had the task of ending our long weekend of music that started back on Wednesday at Bromborough Folk Club, passed through Allan Taylor and John Wright at Parkgate, Last Night's Fun in Sheffield and had already involved Jon Redfern and Rachael Unthank and the Winterset - most of which will get separate reviews shortly - and being completely un-prepared for what followed, I was just about to relax into a pleasant session of acoustic music from this plain looking trio with guitar, fiddle and accordion when they started to play a jolly piece, rather like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, lively and sparkling with intent. A brief pause to introduce the next piece, "The Stuart Thompsons of Fairisle" and WHAM! I'd pretty well given up writing any descriptions down after this - it started gently and lulled us into a nice cozy, peaceful mood and then became something else, something most unexpected. After about 5 pieces I had to jot something down and here it is:

"wild, controlled, sleek, dirty, fast, slow, calm, gentle and rip-roaring, breakneck white-knuckle jazz strewn folk."

Add to this the frenzied antics of Martin Green, whose head was banging in the Motorhead sense of the word, hair following half a second behind, legs kicking up and about, his accordion suffering abuse after abuse as the bellows are twisted and pulled and it's keyboard pummeled! You had to fear for his neck lasting the night, never mind his instrument.

The other two members are Kris Drever on guitar and vocals, and Aidan O'Rourke on fiddle, a player so good that he was awarded Scottish Trad Music Instrumentalist of the Year as he was entertaining us - a suitable bottle and a note being passed onto stage part way through the set - causing him much blushing and gaining a huge round of applause. The band have lots of roots, I won't go on here, you can look them up in the links.

It's not all frenzy either, there is some sublime stuff on offer here, the "Hill behind Cromarty" providing a gloriously evocative slice of Scottish countryside in aural form, Aidan's fiddle emulating the birds wheeling around your head as you walk up the hill. This was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful, precise and fragile, windswept and biting , and a perfect gentle phase before they demolished us with "Hinba", Martin moving on from fingering and resorting to running his palm up and down the keyboard! - Standing ovation, much cheering, exhausted.

Lau should carry a health warning - they are so good for you!

I'll leave the final words to Gilly, who took the FolkingAbout notebook during one frenzy stage and just wrote: "HOLY SHIT!!!!"

















Impression of Martin Green - copyright Gilly Farrie 2006