Lau
Album: The Bell That Never Rang
Label: Reveal
Tracks: 6
Website: http://www.lau-music.co.uk

Lau, that most stimulatingly original of contemporary folk trios (comprising Kris Drever, Fatea instrumentalist of the year, Martin Green and Aidan O'Rourke), continue to surprise and challenge with every new release, and The Bell That Never Rang must be counted among their toughest propositions, even for those who might expect something startlingly new from each successive release. The Bell That Never Rang is an album that gives fresh meaning to the term "musically adventurous" in its uncompromising yet strangely natural-sounding marriage of acoustic folk tradition and electronica, two musical worlds which until even quite recently might have been thought almost diametrically opposite. Sure, there have been plenty of fusion outfits that have brought electronics into traditional instrumental music, but these have focused principally on pulsating treatment of dance forms. Lau, on the other hand, take original song or haunting, almost ambient soundscapes as a starting point for selective creative improv rather than building or predictably overlaying electronic rave grooves on top of existing forms or structures.

They're as much influenced by contemporary classical or minimalist modes and gestures, as the cyclic development section of Back In Love Again implies; yet even taking on board this purposeful quality in the generated momentum, it can be hard to divine where they're heading - such is the spirit of adventure that pervades and defines each of this disc's six new compositions. From the deliberately propelled upbeat thumpery of The Death Of The Dining Car to the less opaque, more limpid imaginings of First Homecoming, the listener is taken on a journey by three musicians who do know in (or towards) which direction they are steering, and we must keep the faith for fear of running aground (the only situation where I feel they're in some danger of doing so is the comparatively aimless meltdown of Tiger Hill).

The album's central statement, its17-minute title track, was, we learn, worked up for the Commonwealth Games in celebration of Glasgow; and it's almost galaxies away from the remainder of the disc in that its episodic nature is entirely belied by its cohesive flow and its distinct sense of purpose, this no doubt born out of continual reworking during live performances right up to this recording. The string section (The Elysian Quartet) sets the scene with almost pastoral neo-classical lucidity before rising up like a colony of angry ants to scurry around discordantly in barely controlled disarray, only settling down again around Kris's even-toned vocal intoning a soothing, heartfelt lyric that develops into an expansive choral mantra and animated string peroration. Stirring stuff, and wholly unlike anything even Lau has done before. Even the CD's closing track, a calmer reworking of Ghosts (from last year's EP with Adem), can't quite assuage the impact of the magisterial epic that has preceded it. It does, however, set the anthemic seal on an album which makes more capital out of Kris's magnificent soaring voice than ever a Lau album has done before.

And with a trusting yet guiding production by Joan Wasser, this CD is a remarkable artistic endeavour by any criteria, one that seems to take even greater pleasure in its permitted freedom and organic intuition.

David Kidman