Album Notes

A runaway success at the largest Celtic Music Festival in Europe last year, folk and dance collective Taran have recorded their collection of Welsh traditional tunes infused with an underbelly of dance music for general release on St. David’s Day 2009. Catraeth takes its name from Wales' oldest written poem, the Gododdin. And it’s with this resolute patriotic pulse that the album beats throughout. Each song pays respect to the Welsh standard repertoire with a variety influences from the evolving Welsh cultural landscape, sampling lines of epic verse and shades of Under Milk Wood. But the traditional is re-written, re-phrased, turned inside out teased and rearranged with a with a heady mix of loops and grooves, Sputnik samples, 15th century Galliards and live instruments. Widely respected and talented musicians Danny and Gerard KilBride contribute guitars, fiddle, pibgorn, programming and pipes. Taran’s other musicians were handpicked by the brothers, and they are, master piper and pibgorn player Gafin Morgan and producer and dance programmer Felix Pepler. And there’s more: Wales' only Welsh speaking Estonian folksinger Sille Ilves on vocals, fiddle and hurdy gurdy, drummer Aled Richards, MC, piper and film maker Rhodri Smith, guest master oboist and flautist Jonathan Shorland, and percussionist Dave Danford complete the line up.