The self-styled “radical folk trio” Lau (the Orcadian word for ‘natural light’) released their second album today in 2008, a live recording. Reviewing the album, The Scotsman newspaper was moved to call it both “genre bursting” and “scintillating”.
2008:
Following up their 2007 debut album, “Lightweights and Gentlemen”, Kris Drever, Aidan O’Rourke and Martin Green aka Lau opted for a live performance set, recording and releasing a gig they played at Edinburgh’s Bongo Club in December 2007.
Brilliantly conveying the energy and improvisation of their shows, the acoustic trio were captured in typically vibrant form, re-worked versions of tracks from “Lightweights….” rubbing shoulders with tunes that would subsequently appear in studio form on 2009′s “Arc Light.”
With instrumentation consisting of guitar, piano accordion and fiddle, the trio serve up freshly-composed jigs and reels while Drever also puts his distinctive vocals to a couple of songs. The fat cat lament “Banks of Marble” was written by farmer Les Rice in the late 1940s and popularised by Pete Seeger, while traditional English folk song “Unquiet Grave” has appeared in various forms on the set lists of Bellowhead, Kate Rusby, Joan Baez and many others.
March 2009 found the trio retracing their footsteps to the Bongo Club, as they unveiled “Arc Light”, a studio album which bolstered their reputation as a folk force to be reckoned with – and aided them in racking up a third successive BBC Radio Two award for “Best Group”. And since then their output has included EPs recorded with Karine Polwart (“Evergreen”), Adem (“Ghosts”) and a forthcoming orchestral collaboration with the Northern Sinfonia (“Strange Attractors”).
October 2012 then sees the release of “Race The Loser” – a brand new studio album that comes with an additional disc recorded live on tour in 2011.
Check out and purchase Lau CDs from our e-shop, Propermusic.com by clicking on the logo below:
And here’s some footage of Lau in action:
