Search - Rare Air :: Hard to Beat

Celtic-funk-fusion at its best!

09/02/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Rare Air were one of the first bands I ever heard even attempt to take traditional Celtic music in a different direction. They've taken the sounds of Celtic music from Ireland, Brittany and North America and combined it with funky bass rhythms and driving Polynesian percussion. Hard to Beat is one of their best efforts, along with the album Na Cabarfeidh. If you like Celtic with a twist, you're going to love this!"

Best Rare Air CD

David Brown | McLean, Va | 09/10/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This was the first Rare Air CD I purchased. Its still a favorite CD of mine. Fantasic pipe playing by Pat O'Gorman, inovative beats and mixes. Unfortunately, all of the other Rare Air productions were disappointments to me, they got too experimental and lost touch with their core sound that this CD exhibits so well."

Triple junction of jazz, Celtic trad and rock

mr_fishscales | Rochester, New York | 05/21/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Until recently this was the only Rare Air CD that I owned. I got it at a 1989 show in Northampton, MA and have played the heck out of it ever since. If I remember correctly what O'Gorman and Coppins said on the stage oh those many years ago this CD represented the fruits of a recent trip to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, a bastion of Scottish traditional music. The Highland pipes appear on most of the tunes and they manage to get a lot of variety out of an instrument with a pretty limited range by varying the rhythms. They borrow from Scottish traditional music, but also from R & B ("Marvin's March; dedicated to Marvin Gaye) and Balkan or Turkish music ("Small as Life"). They also play a lot of games that they must be borrowing from the jazz lexicon. Behind it all is the clattering, driving percussion of Dick Murai. It was the last album with Murai and Trevor the bass player. Their final CD (Space Piper) is much more sedate and jazz-inflected."