Mongrel Review -March 06

This album has been the soundtrack to the last two weeks of my life. It’s beautiful. It’s arrangements for four guitars of contemporary compositions by the likes of Gorecki and Leo Brouwer. There’s a five movement piece on here called ‘White Man Sleeps’ by a guy called Kevin Volans, who is apparently from Dublin, and it’s only gone and rocked my world. Oh, and this closes with an arrangement of a song off The Redneck Manifesto’s first album that is probably the highpoint of this collection. Not for everyone, mind - but then again very little that is worth your attention ever is, is it?

85%
O’Connell

The Irish Times, The Ticket March -10th 06.
Deleted Pieces

The Dublin Guitar Quartet’s repetoire, like most guitar quartets, is full of arrangements. But this group seems to be interested only in contemporary music, and that’s what dominates their debut CD, specifically Kevin Volans’s White Man Sleeps and part of Henryk Gorecki’s Quasi una Fantasia, plus a version of The Redneck Manifesto’s Soundscapes over Landscapes. The group, which uses a range on non-standard guitars (with up to 11 strings) seems to be aiming for a mixture of street band funk and classical sophistication. They favour tight rhythmic delivery as a solid background to a style that delights in colouristic and pitch-shifting effects. This impressive if rather short (42 minutes) disc also includes two original pieces, Leo Brouwer’s delicate Cuban Landscape with Rhumba and group member Brian Bolger’s in-your-face Weak.

Michael Dervan