Luna Park

Paddyland, the trad tourist trap, 2003 – a creaking fairground run by superannuated old buggers stultified by their minority programming public service remit pensions. Once every while, a gullible American or German sightseer will wander in and take a look at the crumbling old exhibits, gingerly brushing the dust off waxwork effigies of Doherty or O Riada and wondering what in hell this has to do with the filthy modern tide.

Plunk! – a stone hits our sightseer in the back of the head. He whirls around, but all he can see are shadows darting through the rusting exhibits. Plunk! – another one hits him in the temple. Then, a sound that sets his skin crawling, a kind of blue nodal modal yodel; Nusrat Paddy Ali Khan.

Welcome to the towering ‘Glanfaidh Me’ the opening tune on Kila’s sixth album, a new year zero for an ensemble that have never been successfully corralled in the trad, new age or world music slums. Rather, they are the children of Planxty gone feral in the sewers under the gaudy carnival grounds, venturing overland every year or so dressed in animal pelts and gaudy glam rags nicked from dead mannequins, terrorising the prudes, spooking the horses and generally stirring it up.

They’re no Pogues or We Free Kings, mind. Kila explode traditional music from the inside out. Like Miles or Mingus, they appreciate the value of memorising the rule book before shredding it, cross-breeding the rivery momentum of the unstoppable session with Hindu drones, Marrakech skreelings and African pulses, while the vocal stylings veer from Colm O Snodaigh’s court poetry (offset by doo-wop guitar on ‘Beilin Meala’) to his brother Ronan’s Hiberno-Jamaican toasting and Andalusian duende.

So, Kila are the bastard offspring of the trad Tuatha de Danaan who mated outside of their species. Luna Park is built around a number of monumental set pieces – the aforementioned opener, ‘The Mama Song’ (Gaelgoir-Balkan sake mixed with ouzo mixed with poitin – ouch!), ‘Baroki’ and the attritious title tune, all intercut with shorter pastoral sketches like the gorgeous ‘Bully’s Acre’. The dynamics on some of these tunes, masterfully manipulated by Mick Glossop, could be The Bothy Band or Moving Hearts sure, but they could equally be the Velvets, The Dirty Three or Sigur Ros.

It’s no contradiction in terms to say that Kila rock, and Luna Park is a tour de force.