THE WEST OCEAN STRING QUARTET
Ae Fond Kiss Claddagh****

Musiciens sans frontières are back. The West Ocean String Quartet have been percolating this new collection for some time now (it’s been three years since their last release, The Guiding Moon), and time has worked its miracle on the album’s centrepiece, Oileán na Marbh, a song cycle for singer Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill. Drenched in an emotionally charged history, documenting the burial of babies who died before baptism on unconsecrated ground, this quartet of Irish-language songs needs no translation: its full force is palpable in Ní Dhomhnaill’s sublime vocals and composer Neil Martin’s pinprick arrangements.

It’s not all doom and gloom, and the West Oceaner’s Bach-analian treatment of the French Canadian Reel Béatrice drips with indelible delight. Another compelling chapter in the the Quartet’s circuitous journey. www.wosq.com