Òran bagraidh

"This engrossing recording emerged from a residency of Scots, Irish and Welsh poets and musicians deliberating on Oran Bagraidh, the only surviving example of Galloway Gaelic and revivified here, to a later tune, on waves of accordion and harp. It is fascinating, haunting and occasionally ineffably weird - as in the unexplained eldritch cackle that erupts from the duo Bragod, who specialise in the early Welsh once spoken in Galloway".

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"This album came from a Galloway residency for diverse musicians from Scotland, Ireland and Wales to create new work inspired by Òran Bagraidh, a medieval poem that's the only surviving example of Galloway Gaelic, an extinct dialect once spoken in South-West Scotland where in medieval times Welsh was spoken alongside Gaelic ... These musicians celebrate Galloway's medieval multicultural diversity with a mixture of traditional and experimental material that reimagines the archaic world of Cumbria/Strathclyde that's still called "The Old North" by Welsh people today ... Gwyneth Glyn puts graceful music to the 7th century Welsh lullaby Pais Dinogad, and there's a medieval plainchant quality to Lorcán Mac Mathúna's meditative music for the modern Irish poem Laoi Na Seilge. Other pieces sound more contemporary. MacGillivray's love song Morning Of Blood sounds like Loreena McKennitt. Bragod puts avant-garde music to the 9th century Welsh poem Uryen Erechwydd, performing it with lurid, ululatory vocals that sound like Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs For A Mad King ... An engaging album that mixes tradition and innovation in a dramatic way".

"This is a piece of musical archaeology. It feels like you are hearing sounds and words from the distant past. But it's also a piece of musical conservation, the result of the Knockengorroch Off Site residency at Barscobe House in Galloway, south-west Scotland. It's a broad Celtic musical tapestry. The wellspring of the project is "Òran Bagraidh", an ancient song sung in Galloway Gaelic (the only surviving example) ... A highly eclectic album, from avant-garde experimentalism to traditional ballads spanning over a millennium. [Barnaby] Brown's revival of the triplepipes, precursor to the Highland bagpipes, is yet another layer of musical revelation in this celebration of embattled and hard-earned identities".