Buille Cd

[Charles Hunt]

After watching some of the videos of the group Buille (I believe pronounced similar to Beulah) on Youtube, I ordered their CD. It arrived yesterday, and I gave it a listen where I do most of my music listening these days, in my truck. I think it is a great CD. The central instrument is Naill Vallely's anglo concertina with great support on piano, guitar and percussion. Like Simon Thoumire's recording "Big Day In", the CD is very musical, interesting, and never becomes tiresome from the beginning to end. I highly recommend this CD not just because it is a concertina CD, but because in my opinion, it is an exciting new sound in celtic music. All the best, Charlie

[ceemonster]

i stumbled on buille on myspace, watched the videos [i believe they are on youtube as well] and intend to order the cd, pronto. mr. vallely's heavy staccatissimo ornamentation in some of his irish playing, such as the excerpt from an instruction product which is also on youtube, is not my sound, but his very clean yet virtuoso stuff on these buille clips had me over the moon. truly, he is a stylist who can do anything....

 

while it may be new for celtic music, the experiment buille seems to be undertaking (one member described it as trad/jazz/blues/etc) is very much in line with a trend in european jazz to experiment with improvisational playing based not on chord structures from blues, bebop or tin pan alley standards, but instead to try jazz-ish improvisational playing based on european folk/traditional chord structures. an early exponent of it is jan garbarek, the norwegian sax player. i really like the finnish accordionist maria kalaniemi, who does jazzish stuff derived from traditional finnish folk.

 

interestingly, this movement has been controversial in the jazz community in a manner not unlike some of the "pure drop-versus-modernist" controversies that sometimes rage in the itm community. some see the new euro-trad-folk-jazz experiments as a current cutting edge of jazz, others see it as "NOT JAZZ!!!," not being derived from african american chordal harmonies. regardless, i like buille also!