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Re-renaissance Of The Celtic Harp | Free download album

The Foul Papers / High Quality Recordings / Listen With Sarah / Mank / Operator / Orcop / Pappy / Recall

Fourteen weird and wonderful tracks reshaping elements of Alan Stivell's classic 1970s instrumental folk album 'Renaissance Of The Celtic Harp'.

Alan Stivell's 'Renaissance De La Harpe Celtique', released in 1971, was responsible for a phenomenal worldwide surge of interest in the celtic harp, a small to medium-sized instrument usually designed for traditional music and prominent in Welsh, Bretton, Irish, Scottish and other Celtic cultures.

Some of the artists on 'Rerenaissance Of The Celtic Harp' share a love of Stivell's original album, having either grown up listening to it or picked it up while digging charity shop crates for sample material. Others had never heard of it until a dusty CDR was thrust in their direction one day. The result is fourteen weird and wonderful tracks stretching and reshaping elements of Stivell's masterpiece.

This album is meant to be experienced as a coherent whole - this is not a 'compilation'. Individual tracks have purposely not been attributed to specific artists, and none of the tracks have titles. The artists involved in the project are:

The Foul Papers

The Foul Papers played stringed instruments with a sucessful band for a while. Now he plays without them. His contribution to this album was produced in a tiny refurbished rural church in the grounds of the ruined Castle Saunderson in the border boglands of Northern Ireland. Tending a dairy herd in daylight hours, at twilight, the man behind Foul Papers walked up to the castle, burned down in the troubles, and disappeared into the tumbledown church to write.

High Quality Recordings

Geraint Ffrancon has been producing ecclectic, weird, beautiful and harsh electronic music for five years. Never one to stand still for long, he has released material on legendary electronic label Ai Records, recorded several sessions for Radio 1 including a live session at Maida Vale in 2006, and in between has found time to collaborate with a wide range of artists including Steffan Cravos of pioneering Welsh language hip-hop outfit Tystion, and as one half of Seindorff with Haydon Hughes. www.highqualityrecordings.co.uk

Listen With Sarah

"Occasionally, very occasionally something comes along that totally throws you in it's sheer "What the f**ks going on here?" factor, wrote one reviewer of Sarah Nelson's surreal sonic creations. She has the honour of being one of John Peel's last musical discoveries (the 'Are You Sitting Comfortably?' EP sitting in his final record box) and continues to refuse to even open the musical rulebook. www.listenwithsarah.org

Mank

Probably the only person to base his compositions on tidal flow data from the Menai Straits, Ben Powell has been recording as Mank since 1998. Over the last decade his sound has developed substantially, from the sample based electronica of 'Ecaz Nous' to the deep analogue ambient of 'Madarch' via the post-rock guitars of his band Micrographia. Mank's latest album 'Isbjorn', inspired by his research work in the Arctic, was recently aired on Radio 3's 'Late Junction' show, and his previous album was played in full on Radio Wales by Adam Walton, who described Ben as "one of the most important electronic artists in Wales". www.myspace.com/mankymusic

Operator

Combining the most eclectic and contemporary aspects of new electronic music, Edinburgh's Operator - aka Lewis Lachlan MacColl - is individual and different. Having released material on revered Scottish label Benbecula and on Neil Landstrumm's New York-based Scandinavia Records, his new material is a stunning marriage of cutting-edge electronics and lush vocals. www.myspace.com/oper8or

Orcop

Cardiff-based Gwydion ap Hywel makes frighteningly beautiful pure electronic music, to date releasing a number of tracks through the Machine Records label - both as Orcop and under his previous nome de rave Middlekid. His love of analogue gear is legendary and for years he refused to even look at computers. Search out the 12" 'Diablo And Drum' release on Machine Records, or his new self-released album 'Everything Has Ended'. www.myspace.com/orcop

Pappy

Cardiff-based North Walian Haydon Hughes has been shooting warning tracks across the bows of electronic music for a few years now, as Klube, Y Pencadlys, and Pappy, as well as being one half of Seindorff with Geraint Ffrancon. His productions combine a love of deep groove and a truly ecclectic approach to songwriting, which recently included the use of live falsetto vocals at a triumphant appearance at Cardiff's Swn festival. www.myspace.com/pappylove

Recall

Originally a member of Welsh psychedelectronic geniuses Zabrinski, West Wales hip-hop producer Iwan Morgan's original releases as Recall received heavy airplay from the likes of Mary Anne Hobbs. His previously unreleased debut album 'Plotlines' (which in his own words 'fell between the cracks') has finally become available as a download, some eight years after he started work on it. A new album 'West Wales Gothic' is now in the works. Iwan is also busy producing the second solo album from ex-Gorky's Zygotic Mynci Richard James, as well as working with the Texas Radio Band on new material. www.westwalesgothic.co.uk