by Neil McFadyen on 3 May, 2012 – in Reviews

Treacherous Orchestra are an 11 piece band featuring musicians from (amongst others) Shooglenifty, the Peatbog Fairies and Salsa Celtica. Following their hugely successful debut at Celtic Connections in 2009, the band have been bringing their considerable talent together and have, at last, produced a studio album titled ‘Origins’.

Like something from a Celtic Noah’s ark (and, let’s face it, we get the rain for it up here) this band come in two-by-two… double helpings of pipes, fiddles and percussion are joined by accordion, banjo and guitar to produce a sound that’s as big as the band, and then some. The membership reads like a who’s who of latest generation of Scottish tradition based music…

Ross Ainslie – Bagpipes & Whistle: Ali Hutton – Bagpipes & Whistle: Kevin O’Neill – Flute & Whistle: John Somerville – Accordion: Éamonn Coyne – Banjo & Tenor Guitar: Adam Sutherland – Fiddle: Innes Watson – Fiddle: Barry Reid – Electric & Acoustic Guitars: Duncan Lyall – Double Bass & Bass Guitar: Martin O’Neill – Bodhrán: Fraser Stone – Drums.

As you’d expect from such a gathering, it’s loud and it’s lively – but there are some soothing interludes which, other than providing a rest for the tapping feet, help underline the breadth of talent and level of craft that’s gone into Origins. Not surprisingly, pipes and fiddle are the predominant voices throughout, but in an instrumental album there’s always plenty room for the other contributors to shine, and Origins is no exception.

Following the short warm up of Overture, the first 15 or so minutes of the album are a whirlwind of delights. The opening stomp, March Of The Troutmen heralds the arrival of a set of three tunes (Sheepskins Beeswax / Taybank Shenanigans / Superfly) in which Superfly‘s symphonic strings seem to justify the creation of an eleven piece band on their own.

With irresistible jazz/gypsy riffs and alternating frantic and freaky dance grooves, Look East brings the opening exuberance to conclusion, before the vintage feel of a short Prelude introduces Sea Of Clouds. This track soothes the listener like an idyllic Hebridean holiday – blissfully peaceful in the sunshine, with a ceilidh to herald the sunset. Equally soothing and melodic, is Easter Island. Caught between these two gentle offerings, Sea Of Okhotsk contrasts sharply, and has an opening Tangerine Dream would have been proud of, before it dives headlong into a frantic multi-instrumental dance.

The album closes as it opened – in a light hearted mood. Sausages is an epic, lively set of tunes. A reggae inspired opening introduces electro-ceilidh beat building towards a trance conclusion that owes almost as much to Shooglenifty and Martyn Bennett as it does to the band’s prowess.

For anyone who’s new to Treacherous Orchestra, this should be an exciting and invigorating breath of fresh air. For those who’ve enjoyed them live, Origins should be just what you expected and hoped for – but with the added benefit of crisp, clear production and the option to enjoy the whole performance again as often as you like.

Origins is about energy, joy, exuberance….if we could bottle this energy there’d be no more arguments about wind farms.

Review by: Neil McFadyen

Posted on Pipehacker | April 13, 2012 | by Vince Janoski

When you first look at their album cover for Origins, Treacherous Orchestra appears as if it is just the latest thrash metal group or DJ-dance-hall-fusion-electronica band. Never would you suspect an ensemble that pays a great deal of homage to their Celtic traditional roots and puts forth a sound that is like a Scottish country dance band with a bit too much Talisker in their tea. Or maybe too many peyote mushrooms…

Anyway, despite their array of traditional instruments, there is nothing standard or typical in the elaborate arrangements by this group. Thick, layered grooves and deeply rooted Celtic rhythms and instrumentation fused with the aforementioned rock and dance club stylings mix in dramatic fashion. Each track is a jazzy ride of sound that leaves you forgetting you’re listening to, if we have to define them, a Celtic-rock group. Nothing is forced or overrendered, though. Many of these types of fusion groups are unholy combinations of hard rockers and traditionalists who just try too hard. But Treacherous Orchestra is nothing of the sort. Their music is polished and thrilling, and never do they lose the joyful drive that is at the core of traditional Celtic music.

Anyone who has seen rising young musicians Ali Hutton and Ross Ainslie kicking it at Piping Live! knows what lies in store. These guys have been a fixture on the Scottish session scene for some time and on this album, as always, they take tired traditional licks and infuse them with new energy. These pipers and joined by an ample troupe of ten other musicians to create a deeply original and exciting sound. Whether it is multi-dimensional tones in the operatic thirteen-minute “Sausage” where the changes are seamless, or capturing a mood that is both frenetic and cheeky as in “Superfly,” where the repeating riffs seem neither redundant nor tired, or the more sombre and traditional “Sea of Clouds,” Treacherous Orchestra gives you a lot to hold on to and leaves you wanting more at the end of each track.

Their grooves move forward with a hint of the rock bands of the past, always threatening to careen out of control but always returning you safely at the end. (Dare I say there are touches of Jethro Tull in “March of the Troutmen?”).

Anyhoo, twenty bucks not spent on their CD is wasted money, I say. Hit their website and hope they give a concert near you.

The Shetland Folk Festival Society has selected 5 young Shetland musicians to participate in another exciting and innovative Folk Festival collaboration project that will form part of the 32^nd annual event, kicking off in two weeks time.

Working in partnership with the Anderson High School, The Trad Seeds project will unite the 5 young musicians with some of the most celebrated folk stars in the country.

From 30^th April the students will be tasked with providing a 40-minute slot for the Friday night concert at the Clickimin Centre – despite never having played together before.  With tuition and support from four members of the Scotland’s extraordinary Treacherous Orchestra, the students will have to write, arrange, rehearse and eventually perform to hundreds of people on the Festival’s largest and most profiled stage.

The project is part of Festival’s Youth Programming and Development remit.  Davie Henderson from the Committee said “that the Festival is always looking to develop new experiences for Shetland’s talented youngsters.  Many of our young musicians get the opportunity to perform at our mainstream Festival concerts and the Youth Event but this project will be particularly challenging due to the timescales involved.  We know from our previous educational projects like Nordic Tone and S.H.O.W that the students gain a tremendous amount of confidence and experience and we look forward to seeing how this group flourish during the Festival week and thereafter”.

Group members are Danny Garrick (fiddle), Joe Watt (guitar/bass), Isaac Webb (percussion), Callum Nicolson (accordion/piano) and Liza Fullerton (fiddle).  All are still at school but have fantastic ability and various levels of on stage experience with both traditional and contemporary acts in Shetland.

Travelling to Lerwick 5 days in advance of their gig to lend them a hand are John Somerville (accordion), Fraser Stone (percussion), Adam Sutherland (fiddle) and Innes Watson (guitar/fiddle) who play in some of the most successful Trad outfits in the UK.  They’ll headline the Friday night gig of the Festival with the incredibly popular and highly regarded 12-piece ‘Supergroup,’ Treacherous Orchestra.  Also on the bill that night are Sprag Session from Cape Breton who are set to be one of Nova Scotia’s biggest musical exports with their dynamic mingling of beats and melodies.  With this turbo charged line up, the Friday Clickimin gig is looking set to be a particularly incendiary experience.

Although many of the Festival’s concerts are now sold out, there is still some ticket availability for this concert and the Clickimin on Thursday 3^rd which features a one-off gig with the hotly tipped rising band Admiral Fallow.  The shop at 5 Burns Lane opens for face to face ticket sales on Thursday 19^th & 26^th between 6-8pm and Saturday 21^st & 28^th between 12noon and 3.  Tickets and memberships can also be purchased by completing and returning the booking form downloadable from the Festival’s website – www.shetlandfolkfestival.com

Lorient Festival Interceltique

This will be TO’s first trip to Brittany and France.

Following on from their 2010 EP, and re-presenting a couple of those tracks, Origins is billed as the first full-length recording from the new Leviathan of Scottish music. Forget The Unusual Suspects, forget Big Sky: this eleven-man pan-Scottish ensemble is where it’s at. The members of Treacherous Orchestra include Kevin O’Neill, John Somerville, Innes Watson, Ross Ainslie, Adam Sutherland, Éamonn Coyne and Ali Hutton, all with enviable reputations. Uniting them is a passion for the music, a freshness of approach, and a prodigious technical ability. There’s also the musical glue provided by Duncan Lyall, Barry Reid, Martin O’Neill and Fraser Stone on bass, guitars and drums.

From the precious thirty seconds of piano and precipitation that is Prelude to the thirteen-minute multi-instrumental madness called Sausages, this collection is as eclectic as its creators. Flute, box, pipes and fiddle vie for the front line, while the style swoops from Acid Croft to Salsa to Folk Rock to Balkan and back again. Elements of Scandinavian music, forays into Forres Country Dance, hints of heavier rock influences, and a big beefy bowl of bagpipe stew: all this and more is packed into Origins. The website www.treacherousorchestra.com mentions many of the Scottish bands whose music fed into this fiery crucible, but it would be impossible to name them all. A couple which sprang to my mind were Bongshang and Burach, with their idiosyncratic use of box and banjo, but the Treacherous sound builds on everything from The Easy Club to Ceolbeg.

Most of Origin is upbeat and energetic, dictated by the frantic scribblings of these precocious pyromancers. Superfly is pure contemporary Scottish folk-funk, daringly chromatic, with the Uzi rattle of pipers’ fingers and the gratuitous use of modern technology. Look East moves more into the remote modal territory of Shooglenifty or some of Gordon Duncan’s music. Contrast these with the serenity of Sea of Clouds, a beautiful slow air on flutes followed by a box slow reel. Weirdness and powerful rhythms return on Sea of Okhotsk, before the rock anthem Easter Island shows off the shock and awe offensive of which this bunch are capable. Finally comes that mega thirteen-minute mash-up, featuring more of the finest pipes, fiddle, box and flutes, ably supported by a thunderous rhythm crew. Impressive firepower is backed by surprising finesse. On the evidence of Origins, Treacherous Orchestra has every right to consider itself Scotland’s musical first eleven.

Alex Monaghan

Here’s the new showreel from the Album Launch @ Celtic Connections in the 02 ABC. It was a stunning night, you can see from the footage that the crowd were bang up for it.

Film by http://somhairle.co.uk/ and http://leadinglinesphotography.net/

Stirling Observer, Friday, March 30, 2012

THERE are lots of great folk albums out there produced by both solo artists and groups and lots of ways to describe them: accomplished, moving, toetapping, vibrant.

How many of them, though, ever genuinely deserve the accolade “exciting”?

The debut album by this Scottish supergroup (including bass player Duncan Lyall from Dunblane) is certainly that though – and so much more.

Hardly the first folk outfit to shake things up a bit they are surely one of the most convincing, with not one note of the rock or electronic dance stylings accompanying the folk sounding out of place or tacked on as some kind of cheap commercial sop.

This is a fully realised, wonderfully polished work from a dozen gifted musicians (plus guests) confident in their tradition and confident in where they want to take it.

You could say it pushes at the boundaries except that that would suggest a degree of striving that just doesn’t seem to apply to such a seamless, flowing album.

The best thing you can probably say is that the hour’s worth of music it provides just doesn’t seem enough, though it certainly covers all the bases.

March of the Troutsmen by fiddle player Adam Sutherland is dramatic and insistent without being overbearing, while flautist Kevin O’Neill provides something truly beautiful on tune mix Superfly, a piece that morphs into a jazzy, dizzying confection guaranteed to make you smile.

Piper Ross Ainslie, meanwhile, provides what, live, is surely the spine-tingling, hairs-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck, lighters aloft moment onEaster Island.

And that’s just a few selected from an album bursting with highs.

With real clarity and overwhelming positivity Treacherous Orchestra may well have produced what turns out to be one of the best Scottish albums of the year.

Truly, there just aren’t enough good things to say about it.

The origins of the 11-strong Treacherous Orchestra, who are marching down from Scotland brandishing this excellent CD, go back to Perthshire where two young pipers, the incomparable Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton, were greatly inspired by the teachings of Pipe Major Gordon Duncan – “one of the true master composers and instrumentalists of the 20th/21st century… His style flowing from finger to finger trickled down and infused these two young protégés with a style and sense of harmony, rhythm and composition that no one else can claim to possess. His passing away in 2005 left the legacy of his music and his influence will never be forgotten.”

Ross and Ali have brought together [ed: don't mind that bit - we have left it in because they like it!!] eight Scottish musicians on fiddle, flute, bodhran, accordion and double-bass, plus crashing drums, razor-sharp electric guitar and Éamonn Coyne from the West of Ireland on banjo and tenor guitar. The basis of the Orchestra was clear-cut: a glorious, bubbling cauldron of raw Scottish music, enhanced by the Orchestra’s players/composers and given a massive shot in the arm. Origins does just that, and sticks a big rude tongue out at anyone who mistakenly thinks that folk music from these islands is dying on its feet.

The Orchestra keeps the audience on their toes and wondering which instrument is going to hit next, from March Of The Troutmen (by their fiddler Adam Sutherland) to the piping fury of the traditional Sheepskins Beeswax, Ross’s written Taybank Shenanigans and the wonderful Sea Of Okhotsk (Sutherland again!) Whistle, pipes, accordion, flute and a few choice instruments flow over each other in the simply beautiful Ross composition Easter Island. Percussionist Fraser Stone, bass player Duncan Lyall and guitarist Barry Reid are a pulsating wall of sound, leaving Kevin O’Neill’s flute, Éamonn’s banjo and Innes Watson’s fiddle to dance around the meat of the tune – very, very tasty indeed.

The orchestra climaxes with the 13-minute showstopper Sausages, the 10 musicians flooring pedal to the metal in a glorious melange of wild, roaring, fist-waving original Scottish music. I love it to bits.

Mick Tems

It starts with…
“The debut album from Treacherous Orchestra is a blistering, swaggering and infectious affair.”

It ends with…
“Origins is a pounding, sweaty, meaty, debut which promises much and delivers even more: miss out at your peril.”

The full review is on the Top of the World page on the Songlines website

Pretty good really!!

Oh! and if you buy the mag, ‘Superfly’ is Track 10 on the ‘Top of the World’ Cover CD (the editor’s selection of top ten albums reviewed in the issue).

the bright young folk review

Treacherous Orchestra are an 11 piece ensemble of musicians, originally brought together at Celtic Connections 2009 before working extensively together in Glasgow. With backgrounds in bands as luminous as Shooglenifty, the Peatbog Fairies and Salsa Celtica, the artists bring a wide range of talents to this all-instrumental project. Origins is their impressive debut album.

The sound is complex, featuring pipes, fiddles, banjo, accordion, bodhran, drums, pipes & whistles and electric guitar. The individual tracks have an appropriately orchestral feel and as such are quite a bit longer than the typical folk song or instrumental, reaching 15 minutes on the excellent Sausages. The tone varies widely, ranging from energetic dance tunes to melodic and gentle instrumentals.

Easter Island and Sea of Clouds are beautiful, dreamy melodic pieces conjuring images both of sun-kissed Pacific shores but also of the Scottish Isles. March of the Troutsmen has a heavy rock sound, with an ominous opening and overtones of Metallica.

Look East is a stark contrast, being an upbeat number, blending fiddles with Jazz sensibilities, resulting in a toe-tapping, irresistible and ever-so-slightly manic dance track. Similarly exciting is Superfly, although in contrast this tune is driven by fast, energetic pipes. The energy builds into a wild, swirling maelstrom of bagpipes.

Origins is something quite special, with a flamboyant and energy-filled, radical orchestral sound.

Mike Hough  (March 2012)