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Free Music Blog

MAGE RECORDS is an online, independent record label offering Celtic music, traditional Irish ballads, Irish American folk songs, and Scottish music. The Free Music Blog serves as an extension of the label by finding the best free music downloads, CD reviews, and music biz news and tips and serving it up QUICK and EASY for fans of free music.

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Name: Marc Gunn
Location: Austin, Texas, United States

my webpages: Bard Marc Gunn · Brobdingnagian Bards · Celtic MP3s Music Magazine · Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Tips · Renaissance Festival Podcast · SONG HENGE - Celtic Music Downloads · Free Music Blog Links

Friday, May 21, 2004

The Pieces of a Musical Puzzle Come Together -- serious kitchen

Maybe a "musical puzzle" is the wrong term. I've spent the past couple days listening to all the albums I bought from serious kitchen, and it's like a beautiful eye-opener.

As I said yesterday, I think serious kitchen is an absolutely amazing band. They combine perfectly fuse traditional Celtic music with the contemporary. The fusion of three elements, or if you prefer "puzzle pieces": Nick Hennessey on vocals and harp, Vicki Swan on flute and Scottish smallpipes, and Jonny Dyer on guitar. Well, that's the basic formula.

What's really cool is that not all the albums I bought were serious kitchen's. Two were Nick Hennessey, and one of Vicki Swan with Jonny Dyer. Listening to their individual CDs, and I can hear all the gorgeous pieces come together into one majestic band--serious kitchen.

For example, Nick Hennessey's CDs highlight his incredible voice, by far one of my personal favorite singers. He sings somewhat low, warm, robust, and dare I say, very sexy. Add to that that he's a harper. His gentle harping mixes well with his passionate vocals.

His albums are a lot like my Soul of a Harper CD, mixing harp instrumentals with a cappela vocals or performing harp and voice together. Very simple formula. Plus, he adds on top of that his own bardic presence, telling stories in word and song, and sticking with peices that are mostly traditional.

Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer bring the more contemporary part of the music I love. Jonny provides the some contemporary rhythms that have a sorta "groove" to them when they're playing upbeat music. Very subtle and not trying to dominate the music with some hair metal guitar licks... unless he wants to. Then he could easily blow away many Austin guitarists.

Vicki, on the othe rhand, flows just as easily between traditional tunes on the smallpipes and flute and some very creative contemporary music that blends well with Jonny's groovy guitar. Some of their album Thumb Twiddling spends a moment in the Easy Listening genre, before Vicki shows her worth some exquisite flute performance. I tell ye, if this was Easy Listening, I'd be a huge easy listening fan. The music is just delightful. Smiles galore right now as I listen.

You take those three fairly different pieces and put them together and you have serious kitchen. As they call it "People serving up a new vibe in folk music?"

You can listen to a few of their music samples here and I hope to have them back on a Celtic MP3s Music Magazine compilation CD in the very near future since my first compilation is no more.

The one downside, there music only sells in the UK. Hopefully, that'll change in the near future, but as one who ordered the CD online, I'll vouch for the reliability of that. No probs.

Do yourself a favor and check this band out!

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