Alasdair Roberts, Neil McDermott & Tartine de Clous – Au Cube (Okraïna)

Alasdair Roberts leads a Scottish and French folk collective in crafting history under spell and manifesting dreams for the future

Au Cube is a delightfully European record that acts as a statement and tonic against the toxic and narrow-minded. Scottish and French folk traditions are allowed to collide and the result is as subtly magical as it is natural. It momentarily brings to mind my own, far less successful, attempt at blending Scottish and French culture, where years ago in Glasgow I dressed vaguely like Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut for a period of months. French new wave cinema seemed thrillingly other to me, but Au Cube posits an alternative past and lost future where Frenchness and Scottishness have become as one. Oh to live in such times!

The tracks were cut live with an audience at the Cube Cinema, a progressive “microplex” in Bristol, with the prolific and consistently engaging Alasdair Roberts taking up residence alongside fiddler and researcher Neil McDermott, and French folk revival trio Tartine de Clous. As a hauntingly formidable collective they carve out new spaces from pieces of the past, whether it’s fresh takes on traditional numbers, or songs by Anne Brigs, Drag City solo Roberts or indeed Appendix Out.

Opening number “Tout en me promenant” wouldn’t sound out of place on the diegetic soundtrack to an unholy amalgam of Ken Russell’s The Devils and The Wicker Man, such is its deep grounding and sense of history under spell. “Cyclone’s Vernal Retreat” is transformed into an even more autumnal affair than its Appendix Out original, a mournful gaze under the harvest moon. Tartine de Clous bring their unaccompanied three part harmonies to the fore on “Je vous ai menti souvent”, as a great hall and roaring fire manifests around the listener, the magic akin to Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. Meanwhile, “I Fell in Love” escapes the indoors and breathes up out of the very earth, soiled fingers searching for solace.

Each moment on the album turns upon its own axis, crafted and curated worlds alive and spinning at a pace that allows time to contemplate and dream. The past catches up with us on Au Cube, but it’s one that is rich in potential and open to that great moment known as the future.

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