Music

Talisk

Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh

Rob Adams

FOUR STARS

EDINBURGH'S annual celebration of the traditional arts, Tradfest brought down the curtain on its main programme on Sunday with an afterhours finale-party. In truth, however, the party had started in the same venue quite a bit earlier as young trio Talisk fired up the final night audience with their energy-intense take on the tradition.

They make an unlikely source of a wall of sound, playing concertina, fiddle and guitar with quite a studious demeanour. There’s no jumping around onstage but inside, they’re clearly rampant and their relationship with their audience is a tacit bond of mutual encouragement, with spontaneous outbreaks of clapping and dancing in response to the music’s lift spurring the musicians on to lift it further.

It’s an exciting, exuberant performance but what adds to the listening experience is the way the music is arranged. In the absence of songs to vary the mood and tempo, they employ passages of reflection and trance-like motifs or offer a quiet melodic introduction, such as on Highlander’s Revenge or The Mill House, learned from fiddlers Bruce MacGregor and John Martin respectively, and develop it into a rockin’ powerhouse.

The building effect and overall musical shape are enhanced by fiddler Hayley Keenan’s splendidly expressive steadiness whatever the tempo and guitarist Craig Irving’s rhythmical and dynamic variation as they sit on either side of Mohsen Amini’s potentially volcanic concertina playing. Their roles are interchangeable, too: any one - or two - of them can take the melodic line or support it with a variety of long notes, harmonic interventions or crisp propulsion. Quite a gig and quite a gauntlet to throw down to the party afterwards.