John Rae’s Celtic Feet use jazz as a base, original compositions that use traditional motifs and jazz harmony to create a distinctly Scottish sound where free improvisation and traditional Celtic music each has an equal voice. The second album by 'the Feet' clearly demonstrates that this music is evolving into a beautiful and healthy hybrid. The witty and carefree surface of the writing hides a serious and very personal collation of diverse musical threads (jazz and folk obviously plus Latin, salsa, funk, raga etc).
John Rae (drums) Brian Kellock (piano) Phil Bancroft (sax) Eilidh Shaw (fiddle) Simon Thoumire (concertina) Kevin MacKenzie (Guitar) Guy Nicholson (percussion) Mario Caribe (bass)
Media Reviews
his sense of his own tradition (Jimmy Shand gets a namecheck on this disc) is as strong as his sense of adventure and the result is a remarkably integrated display of eclecticism, full of surprise and wit.
"This inimitable ensemble, led by Scottish drummer John Rae and featuring the excellent pianist Brian Kellock, continues on it's path of uniting its homeland's traditional music with the sounds of the wider world. Rae has been a driving force behind the most progressive developments in Scottish jazz in recent times, yet his sense of his own tradition (Jimmy Shand gets a namecheck on this disc) is as strong as his sense of adventure and the result is a remarkably integrated display of eclecticism, full of surprise and wit. Hearing Brian Kellock bring the pumping piano rhythms of Fats Waller's stride style to the accordion -and -fiddle theme of Boogie Celt, or Phil Bancroft's insinuation of an initially moody and then soul-jazzy soprano sax line into the reel-like feel of Sing for Your Fish Supper provides some glimpses of what Rae's music is about, as does guitarist Kevin MacKenzie's Grant-Green like rhythmic groove against the prancing squeezebox theme of Easy Peasy. Rae nods wonderingly to an all-night session he once spent with Indian traditional musicians in Ragabord, a delicately rippling Ornette Coleman lament floating in and out of the mercurial undertow of the tablas. There's a Metheny-meets-Garbarek feel to the mid-tempo groover Coty, and a bleary late-night singalong atmosphere to the concertina/bass duet La Limpiadora Irlandesa. Anybody familiar with Droothie Maggie will find some fascinating surprises in Celtic Feet's mutation of it. As for Eilidh Shaw's slow violin lament on Shawland, it's a spine-tingler." John Fordham.
New music out of old, made with wit, warmth, skill and devotion
Celtic Feet "Live" concert performance
John Rae's Celtic Feet then switched the party on, with the music from their new Caber CD, Beware the Feet. The rugged attack and sumptuous sonorities of Eilidh Shaw's fiddle-playing. the swirl and prance of Simon Thoumire's concertina and Phil Bancroft's Coltrane-ish soprano sax celebrated the regularities of Scottish dance rhythms and the flexibility of jazz-time simultaneously. At some points , with Kellock playing Herbie Hancock's porous chords, it sound like Miles Davis's mid 1960s quartet playing a Saturday night pub gig in Glasgow - and Rae's immensely creative drumming was fundamental to that chemistry. New music out of old, made with wit, warmth, skill and devotion."
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