McGoldrick’s Magic Trance

By Mike Farragher

WIRED is the new CD from flautist, piper, and composer Michael McGoldrick, and it wins the Irish Voice award for the most appropriate album title of the year.

You think pipes and flutes and you think of a more traditional thatched cottage setting, but Michael McGoldrick’s electric Irish music is more at home prowling a loft apartment in some tony Temple Bar neighborhood or the red light district instead of the quaint countryside.

“Strange Journey” is an intoxicating track that couples flutes with a jazz trumpet, with a lightly percolating urban backbeat and throbbing bass line.

Like the album Fused that he released in 2000, McGoldrick pairs the traditional melodies flowing freely from his flute (say that 10 times fast) with a dizzying array of percussive textures.

On Fused, McGoldrick played with trance and electronic beats; for Wired, he spans the globe instead of a laptop for inspiration.

Indian tabla drumming gives “The Buckfast Five/Wired to the Moon” the musical equivalent of throwing curry powder into Irish stew — still the same comfort food that satisfied you for years, but this time with a kick.

“Sophies” is another Middle Eastern track that blends uilleann pipes with Indian chanting, creating a joyful new sound that is otherworldly in its genius.

So many trad releases focus on the intricacies of the melody and the steak knife sharp turns of a phrase, but McGoldrick plays in a fluid style that leaves little doubt that this man is in touch with his inner funk soul brother.

A co-founder of best-selling Irish instrumental outfit Lunasa and current member of Celtic favorites Capercaillie, Michael McGoldrick has single handedly transformed both traditional and non-traditional Irish music.

Born to Irish parents in the British city of Manchester, according to his press release he was swept up in the city’s active Irish music scene as a youth. At the age of 15 he traded his bodhran for flutes and whistles, and proceeded to win several prestigious All-Ireland championships.

While still in school he founded the popular and influential Celtic rock band Toss the Feathers, with whom he first came to international prominence . His 1995 duet album with Toss the Feathers’ fiddler Dezi Donnelly, Champions of the North, won BBC Radio Two’s Young Tradition Award, making him the first wind player to receive the honor.

As you can imagine, McGoldrick’s talent is sought after, with the instrumentalist regularly guesting on world music albums from the likes of the Afrocelt Sound System.

There are a number of occasions on Wired where McGoldrick plays it straight. “The Honest Bar/Forgotten Daze/Cottelsoe Beach” is a rambling reel that calls to mind his work with Lunasa. Some tracks start out nice and sweet, with a subtle flute melody, before the jazz trumpet and a brushed cymbal transforms the arrangement into a trip to see Miles Davis in Manhattan by way of Meath.

Traditional Irish music purists may wag their finger at McGoldrick’s defacing of ancient melodies, but world music gems like Fused and Wired are two examples of how this renaissance musician has his finger on the pulse of modern day Ireland.

In the advent of ring tones and imported music from the likes of Eminem playing in the heads of the Irish, traditional sounds are relegated to the back room of pubs. McGoldrick grabs the Celtic Tiger by the tale and feeds the beast with the wired sounds of the go-go culture of modern Dublin, complete with sounds from the many immigrants who now inhabit space on either side of the Liffey.

Wired is a disc that belongs in your record collection, whether you are plugged into traditional tunes of wired into trendy cross-pollination of cultures.

Wired is available on Compass Records.