Kila Gambles and Comes Up Big

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Irish Voice Entertainment

Kila Gambles and Comes Up Big

September 28, 2007

By Mike Farragher

THERE”S no wagering on Kila’s new CD, Gambler’s Ballet. The band has rolled the dice and emerged a winner! The band is packed with expert players that are skilled with coaxing international sounds from traditional instruments like the fiddle, mandolin, uileann pipes, and low whistles. I saw them live during their “Luna Park” tour a few years ago, and I was completely mesmerized to watch this Celtic colony weave around each other at close range.

I suppose it’s pretty commonplace to hear this global shifting music in the marketplace, most notably in the glitzy Cirque du Soleil productions, but Kila is a pioneer of this genre and would rather die than to let it go stale.

They have been fermenting in Dublin since 1987, releasing Tóg é go bog é a decade later. Not content to rest on its laurels, the band has been redefining the Irish traditional music scene ever since.

They have jammed with Japanese musicians, provided tunes for Irish soap Ballykissangel, and have maintained a fiercely independent streak. While every musician in Ireland seems to be all too eager to strap on an acoustic guitar to chase the chart gold mined by the likes of Damien Rice, Kila continues on their merry way of making an exuberant racket.

The collection opens with the sunny “Leath Ina Dhiaidh a Hoct,” which is “Half Eight” translated for the rest of us.

“Half a Bottle of wine/in for the winter/a small can of beer and a full ashtray/last night’s glasses/the smell of whiskey/whistles, fags, the keys of the car/matches, skins, stones from the beach,” sings Ronan O’Snodaigh in the native Gaelic tongue.

While his promotion of this ancient language should be applauded, one would wonder how well these visuals would fit around the beefy grooves when sung in English. To add to the fun, the dense musical bed is injected with the melody of “Pachabel’s Canon in D,” without missing the beat. The curve ball is classic Kila; listeners never know what to expect next.

“I hope people will find it’s different from all the rest of them,” says piper Eoin Dillon of Gambler’s Ballet. I spoke with him last week during his promotional tour of his excellent instrumental solo CD, The Third Twin.

“It’s not as all over the place as our last CD, Luna Park. This one is perhaps not as hectic. There is a lot more of a drum kit as opposed to just the bodhran. It’s a lot more bass in it and its much more groovy and it works more as a whole album. It’s only 40 minutes, so it’s very direct.”

“Electric Landlady” has a watery guitar sauntering by a fretting fiddle to calm its nerves to create a moody reel. Rain sticks shake in the background of it all, adding a degree of jungle humidity to the track.

The title of the song “Cardinal Knowledge” might sound like the band is keeping their mind out of the gutter, but the song itself has a sexy shuffle bubbling under the steamy grooves and pulsating bass lines. “Duisigi” takes the band back to the rain forest for another glorious trip.

The band got nine out of 10 stars in the latest issue of Hot Press, Ireland’s leading music magazine, for good reason. They even made the cover of the magazine with the Thrills for a feature article about the two groups, so it is nice to see the Irish press supporting this offbeat band.

Will Gambler’s Ballet challenge and thrill you? I think that’s a safe bet.

For more information or to purchase this disc, log onto kila.ie.

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