AMzer: Seasons

No one could dispute that Breton musician Alan Stivell almost single-handedly revived global interest in the Breton harp and, indeed, in Celtic music generally. In the 1970s, his Renaissance of the Celtic Harp and A L’Olympia albums adorned as many pricy penthouse apartments as they did the flats of folk aficionados around the world. Subsequently, his commercial profile may have waned somewhat, yet AMzer: Seasons, his 24th album, is, in its own way, just as uncompromising as any of that groundbreaking earlier material. Its lyrics are poems related to nature and the seasons: they range from Japanese haikus to verse from a Breton teenager's verse.

Musically, it's based on themes built from Stivell's harp improvisations, elaborated by vocals, flutes and percussion. His harp has been, as he puts it, ‘deconstructed-reconstructed,’ so as ‘to make listeners think of anything but a harp: the sound of an acoustic bass, of an electric guitar… of other sounds totally distorted and experimental.’ The results are challenging, then, but certainly could never be accused of lacking integrity.