CD REVIEW
Reviews of Deep Dead Blue
Classic FM Magazine
"Deep Dead Blue"
was chosen by Nick Bailey as his
"CD of the Month"
October 1999
If you saw the original Riverdance performance at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 you will remember Anúna. Along with the dancers, this choir of Irish singers were an integral part of the show.
The Riverdance phenomenon was so successful that their director Michael McGlynn decided that they needed a break away in order to retain their own musical identity Deep Dead Blue is the result. Immediate comparisons can be made with Clannad but the sound is less commercial and certainly more classical. The whole album is mostly a cappella and medieval in style with many of the tracks based on a few strange and beautiful musical fragments from ancient Ireland.
The name Anúna derives from the Irish "An Uaithne", which is the collective name of the three ancient types of Irish music, lullaby, happy song and lament. All three are featured on this CD and if you like your music simple and cool as an Irish mountain stream then this is definitely for you. The title track "Deep Dead Blue" by Elvis Costello, but don’t let that put you off, because it is a beautiful lament. My favourite track is "Quem Queritis", a medieval Irish tune arranged by Michael McGlynn. It’s a cross between Gregorian Chant and Arvo Pärt, and Anúna certainly give the Hilliard Ensemble a run for their money!"
ELVIS COSTELLO
June 1998
Liner Notes for "Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours & Rendezvous:
Songs Of Elvis Costello"
"As director of the 1995 Meltdown Festival at London's South Bank Centre I was able to seek out and collaborate with the Brodsky Quartet, Fretwork, the Jazz Passengers and Deborah Harry, Donal Lunny, Anúna, Composer's Ensemble, Marc Ribot, June Tabor, Steve Nieve, The Fairfield Four, Jeff Buckley, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gunther Schuller.
Guitar player and composer Bill Frisell and I also put together a short program of his transcriptions of some of my songs, together with tunes such as "Weird Nightmare" and "Gigi." We ended the set with some words that I had set to music that Bill had sent to me. The result was "Deep Dead Blue". Our first public appearance together was recorded and later issued under that title on a limited-edition CD by Nonesuch Records.
Michael McGlynn is a remarkable composer and leader of the choral group Anúna. He has also been a good friend and a fine teacher in helping me overcome my reluctance to master musical notation. This allowed me to work more freely on The Juliet Letters and subsequent "written" compositions.
Most of Michael's pieces draw on Irish early-Christian and pre-Christian texts as well as traditional airs and lyrical themes. These sources are recast in Michael's beautiful and startling music. It was therefore something of a departure for him to arrange "Deep Dead Blue" for the group. As Bill Frisell and I are yet to complete another composition, it is great to hear the transformation brought about by this choral rendition of our solitary song."
December 1996
Years ago, on seeing Anúna perform at The Project Arts Centre, something drew me to their music - something quite indefinable. Whether it was the fact that they took chances with their material and their style I don't know, but I became a fan, and to this day have remained one.
This album, while following many of the cues which prompted their earlier output, is by far their most accomplished record yet. Its material ranges from the title track, a joint composition of Elvis Costello and avant-gardist Bill Frisell, to readings of Irish traditional songs like 'Sliabh Geal gCua'. There are, of course, an infinity of experiences in-between.
From the off the album emotionally engages the listener, solo voice or layered vocal, ancient Latin or English text, or modern lyric drawing one in to the very core of the music. That, I think, is what distinguishes Anúna's music from the rest - the tight connection to the heart and beyond.
Mind you, it's not music to be flirted with; It demands a reciprocal commitment from the listener, which, if given, will not go unrewarded.
This is beautiful, beautiful music and deserves the widest audience.
Oliver P. Sweeney
Rating 11/12 [or, equivalently, "Intoxicating"]
The RTE GUIDE [Ireland's Best-selling Magazine]
December 1996
If it ain’t broke, don’t mend it. Anúna’s fourth album continues to mine the seam which has endeared them to audiences across Europe, veering comfortably between historical love poems and religious works, from the love song Blackthorn to the Passiontide grief of Quem Queritis. Ethereal, spacious, warm-hearted, complex in their harmonic structures yet never showing a stitch in the great weave, Anúna always have something interesting to sing.
First off the blocks is the title track, which features a short homage to melancholy written by Elvis Costello, with melody by Bill Frisell. There are echoes of both Costello’s Juliet Letters and some of his own bitter-sweet ballads. Funny how far the old punkster has travelled.
Track two Nobilis Humilis is still on the haunting, seductive trail...The medieval lyric There is no Rose [sic] is charming if a word with such flippant connotations can be used about a hymn.
A new song The Fisher King is quite different from the rest of the album, mostly depending on solo vocal and picked guitar from John McGlynn. Sliabh Geal gCua, with solo vocal from Róisín Dempsey, has that curiously magnetic quality that is the mark of so much of this fine album
Paddy Kehoe
December 1996
Moving ever further away from terra firma and into their own angular, if not angelic, stratospheres, the bias on Deep Dead Blue is for newly composed material, although there are four medieval tracks.
Of the two traditional tracks, the Déise song Sliabh Geal gCua has a solo melody line sung by Róisín Dempsey soaring high above delicately textured harmonies, hovering on the edge of dissonance. The other is the English-language folk-song The Green Laurel, which again occupies a markedly modern tonal landscape.
Ther is no Ros, a 14th century carol, is simply and beautifully rendered, sung by two voices – Máire Lang and Michael McGlynn – true in spirit and letter to its medieval inspiration. Paul Ashe Brown’s live and Brian Masterson’s studio acoustic is to sound what wings are to angels.
Nuala Ó Connor