REVIEWS Martin Brinsford CD An album review by Jim, Editorial Team “Next Slide Please” - Martin Brinsford and Keith Ryan with Gareth Kiddier An Album Review by Jim Davies This is a traditional dance release from three English-based musicians, well versed in English music, but playing mainly Irish music, and also Scots, Scandinavian, and American music. There’s the fiddle of Keith Ryan, the keyboards of Gareth Kiddier, and Martin Brinsford plays the harmonica and our FreeReed cousin, the jaw harp. He also plays us the tambourine, probably the most annoying instrument of all when somebody gets up and thrashes it around out of time, but not here - there’s a consummate use of it, doing what it does best. Martin came to one of the HarmonicaUK Bristol festivals a few years ago, and we had a pleasant time blowing in a session in the café there. I remember hearing the English influences in his playing, so I was surprised how Celtic this collection is. Although it’s a mainly Irish playlist, this doesn’t sound like those fine Irish tremolo players, the Murphy brothers or Noel Battle. To my ears, the sound is Scottish, with the stamp of the greatly underrated Jimmy Shand running through it, but perhaps that’s not surprising - these are top class dance-band players. The harmonica player who comes to mind here is Northumbrian Ernie Gordon, with his Scots influences. In some of the Polkas (such as Hugh Gillespie’s) they sound Mainland Western European rather than British or Irish, perhaps a little more staccato than our styles on these islands. The sharp bite of Martin’s tremolo, cutting through and above and below the fiddle is impressive, using the similar range of the two instruments. He uses the tremolo percussively in some of the tracks, other times the fiddle and harmonica play an octave away from each other, and other times one plays straight while the other does the twiddly bits. The tremolo comes up particularly well in the Scandinavian pieces, the drone of the Hardanger Fjelle being replicated so well by the vibrating tone from the two chambers in the tremolo. They show how tightly they can play, both by the use of the tacet (shutting up for a beat or so!) and also the changing time signatures in “Trowie Burn” and “The Waterman’s Hornpipe”. The chrom gets into the CD too. “The Return of Spring” and “The Mountain Pathway” come from the grand old days of the
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