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FRASER FIFIELD
Honest Water
TANCD001
In a youthful career that to date includes memorable successes with the bands Old Blind Dogs and Salsa Celtica, this is multi-talented Fraser Fifield's first solo outing. It is indeed a measure of this man's gifts that he can produce an album with so many instruments on it and still consider it to be a solo production. Malcolm Stitt provides guitar on one track and Graeme Stephen is drafted in for keyboards on three but apart from that it's all down to Fraser, even to the writing of the tunes. In fact, trad.arr doesn't even get a look in, that's how contemporary it is.
Fraser is largely known for pipes, saxophone and whistles. Combine these with keyboards, clarinet, guitar and percussion alongside his clearly diverse influences and compositional skills and a very broad canvas opens up. The numbers that work best are those that are driven by the pipes, whether small, border or highland, and are focused on a tune that has a beginning, middle and end. The opening track Dark Reel is a belter but the following tracks can lose impetus somewhat and head into musical meanderings. Described by one press cutting as "a one-man Moving Hearts", the whistle and work brings clear reminiscences of The Storm and Davy Spillane's Atlantic Bridge. But Moving Hearts were a band with artistic differences, love-hate relationships and band politics. Okay, these bring their own problems but they often also generate the internal combustion necessary to put an edge on the music and Honest Water is too solitary for that edge.
As someone who was blown away by the fire and vim in Fraser's piping with Old Blind Dogs and his tunes like Glen Kabul, I was disappointed but not downhearted by Honest Water. Not his magnus opus but there's more to come from this young Old Dog yet.
Paul Saunders - March 2003
Have you listened to the album? Want to submit a review of your own?
Fill in the form below and tell us what you think. Please mention the album's name.
I refer to the review of Fraser Fyfield's "Honest Water" album submitted by Paul Saunders in March 2003. I just wanted to point out that Graeme Stephen is, in fact a jazz guitarist and not a pianist. The keyboard parts were played by Fraser Fyfield himself. It says this on the album. Thanks.
Calum Macdonald, Aberdeen
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Folk & Acoustic
