BATTLEFIELD BAND – Room Enough For All Temple Records COMD2106

Battlefield.Band-Room.Enough.For.AllBattlefield Band never stand still. They’re a forty year old institution but their line-up is fluid – players come, players go and sometimes return. The current twin-bagpipes/twin fiddles set-up of Mike Katz, Ewen Henderson, Alasdair White and Sean O’Donnell has been together for a while – White joined as a teenager over a decade ago – and seems very comfortable.

That’s not meant as a criticism but Room Enough For All could be described as a pastoral album, or whatever the equivalent is for music firmly rooted in the traditions of the western isles. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t spring a few surprises. The record opens with a setting by O’Donnell of Louis MacNeice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’, a poem perhaps best remembered now as the starting point for Leon Rosselson’s ‘Brass Band Music’. The poem, written in the 30s, describes the decline of indigenous culture in Scotland and, as the band point out, it applies equally today with only minor updates to the objects of desire. This is a hell of a good time to record it.

Towards the end of the disc is a new setting of Aaron Kramer’s ‘In Contempt’, published in 1950 and included in a selection called In Wicked Times – another piece appropriate to our times. In between are tunes and songs old and new – sparkling dance tunes and wistful airs, and a song about the return of Scots exiles, ‘Farewell To Indiana’ – quiet and reflective but full of optimism.

The multi-instrumental band members don’t need much help. Mike Whellans adds harmonica to one track and producer Robin Morton adds bodhran and bass drum to the final set but that’s all. Listen to the dancing fiddles on ‘The Garron Trotting’ set and you’ll understand why. 

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: www.battlefieldband.co.uk