Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny.

Andy Irvine & Donal Lunny interviewed on Folk on 2.

First, Mike Harding played My Heart's Tonight in Ireland from the Mozaik Live at the Powerhouse CD and then introduced Andy & Donal. Donal first talked briefly about living in Japan, where he apparently spends about half his time, and also about his current interest in arranging and recording Okinawan music.

Then all three talked about the forthcoming Mozaik CD, from which Mike played Sailaway Ladies (an instrumental) and Ruben's Transatlantic Express, sung by Bruce Molsky. I had heard Sailaway Ladies before, when Mozaik played it live at Sesiwn Fawr in Dolgellau (North Wales) in July 2005. But Ruben's Transatlantic Express was new to me and it is truly amazing! It is obviously a train tune, with the bouzouki(s) playing a riff underpinned by Donal's very deep and low-sounding bodhran, on top of which Bruce sings and plays fiddle (Rens possibly plays fiddle too) and Nikola uses his kaval to simulate the train's whistle between verses.

However, the most outstanding aspect of the arrangement (for me) is that, on this track (please forgive the pun ...) the band have taken a typical Western-style musical rendering of a train but then augmented it by integrating different little cameos of Hungarian and Bulgarian dance tunes (on which Nikola showcases his prowess on gadulka, clarinet etc). The whole thing conveys most vividly the motion of a train travelling at very high speed. It is an exhilarating and stunning piece of music, absolutely brilliant in concept and delivery! By the way, the Mozaik studio sound -heard here for the first time- is superb and masterly!

During his contributions to the interview, Andy stated that the forthcoming Mozaik CD, dubbed Changing Trains (as you know!), was not yet backed by a record company and Donal also said that he would still want to apply changes to it before its release.

Finally, Andy added that, for him, one of the frustrations of this putative Mozaik CD was that it features many of the songs and tunes which he would otherwise have released on a solo album. As a parting joke, he suggested that he might consider preparing a retrospective (like Christie Moore did with his box set) and release an album ... every 3 months!

I hope the above summary gives you a good idea of the content of this programme.

Patrick

A very special THANK YOU to Patrick in the UK for taking the time to share this with us.