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Spiro

From United Kingdom

English traditional music in modernist hands

Good things come to those who wait. Spiro might have taken a couple of decades to truly make the impact that their music deserves, but we're certainly glad that the sun now shines fiercely down on them and that their new record Kaleidophonica is every bit as engrossing as their previous, highly successful offering, 2009's Lightbox. An acoustic quartet - fiddle, accordion, guitar and mandolin - that doesn't lose a thing by not having a vocalist, their take on generations-old English tunes updates our isle's folk traditions by applying the modernist rigour and repetition of composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The result is something intimate and familiar, but also widescreen and cinematic. Though their music might be precise, mathematical, metronomic, it's played with terrific amounts of gusto and flair - the sound of a propulsive journey across the undulating green hills and plains of England, one that swells and rises over each oncoming peak.
(Biography written by Nige Tassell 2012
Photography by York Tillyer)

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