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Written in Folk Roots issue 137, 1994

THE CAULD BLAST ORCHESTRA
Durga's Feast
Eclectic ECL CD 9410 (1994)

As anyone who's seen one if its rare gigs will testify, The Cauld Blast Orchestra is a stunning live band. Its wild instrumentals reflect the diverse backgrounds and experience of its members to make a totally accessible and exciting show. If the Scottish artistic renaissance isn't to peter out by simply having shifted its culture into yet another set of comfortable stereotypes, it needs the adventurous re-resourcing that Cauld Blast represents - mostly far away from overt celticism, but deeply Scottish nevertheless, as for example the work of such as Arild Andersen, Jan Garbarek or Karl Seglem is deeply Norwegian. Maybe that's what it needs - a whole bunch of Cauld Blasts so that they could be described as a New Scottish Phenomenon.
      There are parallels, though as yet not many - most obviously in Hamish Moore and Dick Lee's use of traditional pipe music as a springboard for improvisation - but probably, hopefully, quite a lot more are in embryo in the minds of Scottish and other musicians smitten by the ambition to explore without rejecting their roots.
      My first exposure to the band was live, and any CD has a hard time compared to that, but the band has strong appreciators who've got the message straight from disc. This, the second album, combines violin, cello, tuba, tenor horn, whistles, flute, concertina, guitar, bass, piano, saxes, clarinet, percussion and kit drums in compositions by five of the eight members drawing from the wellsprings of traditional music, tango, improvising jazz and more. The music is strongly structured, but it allows for and indeed demands spontaneous creative input from the players. This isn't a fusionist exercise in interpreting material from one tradition in the style of another, but simply a bunch of tunes new-made in their various personal traditions by Iain Johnstone, Karen Wimhurst, Steve Kettley, Ron Shaw and Anne Wood and subsequently shaped by the whole band.
      Though in fact it was made in Glasgow's Çava studio, the album, rather like a classical recording, has the reverb ambience of a hall. This gives the impression to some extent that the band's playing live, but to an invisible silent audience, rather than reaching out into the living room, and there's a neatness here which is some way from the adrenalin-splattered sound the band makes when it's playing live for real. Nevertheless, even on record this is strong, innovative stuff, and each listen shows new aspects. It's music with possibilities, the power to penetrate smug.


© 1994 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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