ARTIST PROFILE
BBC FOLK AWARDS WINNERS BEST GROUP AWARD 2008, 2009, 2010
NEWS
Lau vs Karine Polwart "Evergreen" is forthcoming, 5 new collaborative tracks on CDEP and Digital
more details to be announced soon.
visit Lau's website for more details and gigs
www.lau-music.co.uk
REVIEWS
ALBUM OF THE YEAR - fROOTS MAGAZINE (APRIL 2007)
I’ve perhaps over-anticipated this release. Since being floored by them playing live last summer, and then squeezing every last drop out of their fine promo EP on Reveal, I’ve thought Lau were just the adrenalin shot needed. Beyond the realms of technical, traditional music literacy, the trio displays a delicious propensity for danger and boundary pushing – and all with a disarming glint in their eyes.
Live, they tease and hook. Edinburgh based accordionist Martin Green, West Highland’s fiddler Aidan O’Rourke and Orcadian singer/guitarist Kris Drever – all mighty players and in-their-own-right innovators – take the audience on an immense roller-coaster ride: one moment gliding along an exquisitely painful melody line and, the next swept up by brooding waves of musical muscle and then plunged headfirst into ADHD free-jazz improvisation.
And, hot-dang, its in stereo-literate form. Lightweights and Gentlemen is exciting and visceral from the onset. Hinba is a monster opening track. Obviously orchestrated but still free, it toys with rhythm, texture and harmony; tensely minor chords and driving melodic lines restlessly building to a comically deconstructed finale. But this isn’t just contrived experimental post-modernist jiggery.
The mix may be ever shifting but there is a bedrock of a consistent collective musical luminance. Aidan, Scots Trad Music Awards Instrumentalist of the Year 2006, is a gifted player: his is a pure mellifluous style, easily conjuring up wild and windswept highland imagery. Martin, meanwhile, is potentially the Garth Hudson of the operation – inspired yet slightly unhinged. His tangy tunesmithery and larger-than-life sound are unique and wonderful. And, here, Kris (BBC Radio 2 Mr Horizon Award 2007) confirms what we’ve come to expect of him – singing understated yet devastating songs from the dark side, and providing gilded guitar picking and rhythmic drive.
Balancing those frenzied hi-octane moments are those of aching beauty. The melodic swell of Kris’s and Gallowhill literarily hurt. Kris’s telling of The Unquiet Grave, underpinned by O’Rourke’s gorgeously dulcet-toned fiddle, and sumptuous, expansive bass chords from Green is exquisite. Tune set The Jigs is superbly crafted, and the Butcher Boy a slayer.
So much for over anticipation. This is, in March, album of the year.
Sarah Coxon fROOTS
SONGLINES - TOP OF THE WORLD AWARD!
Formed around 18 months ago, Lau brings together the individually formidable talents of Highland fiddler Aidan O’Rourke (Blazin’ Fiddles), English accordionist Martin Green (Eliza Carthy Band) and Orcadian singer-guitarist Kris Drever, a recent Radio 2 Horizon award winner and all-round man of the moment. Their explosive live performances have been generating a major buzz around the UK folk circuit, and this brilliant debut release confirms their standing as one of the most exciting new acts to hit the scene in years.
The instrumental sets comprise almost entirely original material, enabling the trio to weave a dazzling panoply of influences into their sound, from Celtic to Balkan, Americana to jazz. Combined with astoundingly tight-knit and intricate arrangements, this makes for fiendishly clever music, yet it lacks the least hint of gimmickry or contrivance.
Quite the opposite, in fact: it’s the thrilling synergy and spontaneity of Lau’s sound that hits you first. Only then do you start to appreciate quite how much is going on at any given moment, in the tunes’ multiple layers of interlocking variations on melody and rhythm, running the gamut from juggernaut force to exquisite delicacy. The three songs sung by Drever – Ewan MacColl’s ‘Freeborn Man’ and two new settings of traditional ballads – display his characteristic expressive eloquence, richly complemented by bold yet sensitive accompaniment. Gentlemen they may be, but Lau are certainly no lightweights. (Sue Wilson Songlines 2007)
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH - ALBUM OF THE WEEK
If the rules of music are there to be broken, they are best broken by people who know what they are in the first place. The exceptional musicians who make up Lau - Martin Green, Kris Drever and Aidan O'Rourke - could settle for rattling off traditional jigs and reels with more authority than most.
Instead, they write their own sets. And the direction some of the tunes take is astounding, straightforward melodies and rhythms careering off into all manner of unfamiliar territory while technical brilliance keeps the sound the right side of cacophony.
Drever's handsomely delivered songs, which brought him one of this year's BBC Young Folk awards, add useful balance, but it is the combined sense of style, adventure and fun that turns the album into an utter corker.
GUARDIAN 4 STARS
THE GUARDIAN - Robin Denselow - Today, Tuesday February 5, 2008
It has been a very good week for Lau. Last night, this Scottish-English acoustic trio appeared at the BBC Folk Awards, where they beat off hefty new-folk competition that included Rachel Unthank and Bellowhead, to win the Best Group award. If that was not enough, they were also shortlisted for Best Live Act and Best Album, while their theatrical accordion player Martin Green was among those nominated for Musician of the Year. Anyone wondering what the fuss was about should have checked out their appearance the previous night in the packed upstairs bar of the pub that hosts the Twickenham Folk Club. It was a compelling performance both because of rousing virtuoso instrumental work and the sheer originality of their approach.
Lau, like Salsa Celtica, are products of the highly creative Edinburgh scene, in which musicians constantly seem to be playing with different bands and experimenting stylistically. Fiddler Aidan O'Rourke and guitarist Kris Drever had all worked with a variety of other musicians before they teamed up with Green, a Scotland-based Englishman best known for his work with Eliza Carthy. Together, they have taken a new approach to the folk scene by ignoring traditional material and writing their own jigs, and creating complex and melodic instrumentals that change as the emphasis switches between their three instruments. So a moody accordion passage developed into a robust fiddle section, was driven on by guitar, and then segued into a furious improvisation, with a now-frantic Green almost falling off his stool in excitement. Even when they added vocals, with Drever reviving traditional ballads such as Butcher Boy or Unquiet Grave, the lyrics may have been ancient, but the melodies were always new, subtle and surprising. On this showing, they should have won Best Live Act as well.
'Lau's 'Lightweights & Gentlemen' is Album of the Year' fROOTS Magazine
'a combined sense of style, adventure and fun that turns the album into an utter corker' Telegraph
'Lau are fast making their name as one of the most exciting new acts in recent years' Herald
'as trad as you like but starkly gorgeous in parts, warming and wonky in others, like an epic lock-in somewhere suitably remote, peat-smelling and rain-lashed.' Plan B
'Lau's explosive live performances have been generating a major buzz around the UK folk circuit, and this brilliant debut confirms their standing as one of the most exciting new acts in years' Songlines 5/5
LINKS
CONTACT
| Live Agent | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alan Bearman Music bearman@btinternet.com |
||
| Alan Bearman Music 21 Gisburn Road Hornsey London N8 7BS | Tel: Mob: |
+44 (0) 208 347 4200 / Mob +44 (0) 7855 254 172 |
| Manager / Label Contact | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tom Rose tomreveal@mac.com www.tomrosemusic.co.uk |
||
| PO Box 7535 DERBY DE1 0NF | Tel: Mob: |
01332 552220 07779017236 |
