Arun Sood and Angeline Morrison: Donn/Dubh review – British folk giants startlingly transform sacred histories
(Real World) Leaning on their Hebridean heritage, the duo meld 10th-century Celtic cantos with distortion, dream-pop and post-rock, with shades of Twin Peaks and Boards
(Real World) Leaning on their Hebridean heritage, the duo meld 10th-century Celtic cantos with distortion, dream-pop and post-rock, with shades of Twin Peaks and Boards of Canada Two of Britain’s most exciting folk musicians, both of Hebridean heritage, are behind Donn/Dubh (Black/Brown), an album inspired by Saltair na Rann, a 10th-century Celtic collection of cantos in which sacred history is foretold, and winds are given colours.
Angeline Morrison and Arun Sood expand its spectrum of northerly and westerly shades, soldering together traditional Gaelic texts and tunes with distortion, drone, dream-pop and post-rock. The pair have the chops for such a project. Morrison, co-founder of the Black British Folk Collective, has brilliantly brought forgotten Black histories into the folk canon for years, including on 2022’s The Sorrow Songs.
That same year, Sood’s Searching Erskine used sonic collage and old recordings to conjure the lives of residents on his grandmother’s abandoned home island of Vallay. Their talents converge around Alastair Smith’s startling production: Morrison’s deep voice, ghostly one moment, lullaby-warm the next, inhabiting soundworlds recalling the shuddering shadows of late-90s Boards of Canada and Unkle.
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