Damien O'Kane
Album: Areas Of High Traffic
Label: Pure
Tracks: 11
Website: http://damienokane.co.uk/

Damien O'Kane is a musician that travels many a path, collaborator, sidesman, focus of attention and unlike a lot of musicians he is able to weave all three roles into a perfect thread. It's a difficult role fulfil, one that requires an almost perfect relationship with the music that you are making, as well as the eminent trust of the music that you are working with to feel at home in the three slightly conflicting environments.

Naturally "Areas Of High Traffic" sees him taking the lead and the focus of attention, but like all good leaders, he ensures that those supporting him also get their place in the spotlight, so it wouldn't be right to look at the album without mentioning the contribution from percussionist whose perceptive beats give a number of the tracks on the album the heart upon which O'Kane can add body and soul.

Whilst the songs on "Areas Of High Traffic" may be familiar to you, most are drawn from the tradition, the arrangements certainly will not. To draw an analogy that the album title it's self provides. When sat in heavy traffic there's two choices, you can either go with the flow and have your journey dictated or you can dive into the alley ways, back streets and rat runs and try and take control of the situation. In the end you might not get to where you're going any quicker but it is definitely two different paths getting there. Sometimes these paths converge, at other times run in parallel and at other times still head off in two different directions.

Regardless of the path he's travelling, Damien O'Kane remains firmly connected to the music, both being informed by the music and infusing it with his own personality and verve so that even on a song like "The Blacksmith", normally sang by a woman, his soft Irish bass tone gives the song a quality that makes it his from start to finish. Similarly you are so transfixed by his banjo work in "The God Daughter - Part 1" that the song is over before you realise it was an instrumental.

"Areas Of High Traffic" is an album you'll find yourself returning to, in the days of vinyl the album title could have referred to the stretch of carpet between the shelves and the record player, in this more connected world, let's just assume it's between album and ears, for it's fair to say this is an album that'll be listened to time and time again.

Neil King