rfi-traditional irish music that sounds a bit like drone rock

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i was at a free party on raithlin island,off the coast of northern ireland, a few weeks,and one of the rigs,powered solely by excercise bikes hooked up to some sort dynamo (is that the right word?) incidentally,was playing some traditional irish music
it was very,very different from the standard,stereotyped,"fiddley-dee"
trad music though
it sounded almost like drone rock in places,with the drone possibly coming from a bagpipe
it was also quite intense and shrill at times,almost as if it were related in some way to asian music (i saw a gamelan orchestra perform recently,and the trumpet style thing they have wouldn't have sounded out of place,if you know what i mean)
anyway,there was no one associated with the rig around it at the time, as far as i could discern,so i couldn't find out what it was...
my dad suggested that it might have been planxty,although he didn't really know what i meant by the drone rock bit...anyway,it didn't sound like any of the planxty i've heard,although i did see one of them play some sort of hungarian folk song siuation once,and there were vague similarities

anyone know what this might have been?
fairly vague description i know,but if anyone knows about this sort of thing they might know what i'm talking about...

― robin (robin), Sunday, 7 September 2003 01:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Planxty's not a bad guess. I heard something by them on an old compilation once that sounded like Celtic music of the most ancient order -- it had some qualities that likened it to African and Asian musics. But I think what you heard could very well be something by Peadar O'Riada, a musician steeped in Irish traditions who often incorporates Asian and avant-garde elements in his compositions. I have his Amidst These Hills album somewhere, but can't locate it right now. It's quite maddening since I was hoping to give it another listen to verify it's similarities to your description. I believe he's quite capable of producing the sort of sounds you heard.

Another possibility is that you heard Terry Riley's collaboration with the Rova saxophone quartet -- Chanting the Light of Foresight, which musically interprets an ancient Irish folktale. It's Irish music at its droniest.

― Marcus Barr (Marcus Barr), Sunday, 7 September 2003 02:54 (twenty-two years ago)

cool,thanks for the information
even if its not exactly what i heard,i'm sure it will be interesting...
any idea if any of this stuff is available anywhere,or where would be the best place to look?

― robin (robin), Sunday, 7 September 2003 03:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you positive the music was of Irish origin, though? I mean, because there is plenty of trippy, drony music featuring fiddle..

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Sunday, 7 September 2003 03:27 (twenty-two years ago)

That Planxty song with Bulgarian/Hungarian influences, by the way, is called "Mominsko Horo".

― David A. (Davant), Sunday, 7 September 2003 07:22 (twenty-two years ago)

That was from memory, and if it was correct, I'll be fucking impressed with myself.

― David A. (Davant), Sunday, 7 September 2003 07:23 (twenty-two years ago)

well i'm not certain,but it did sound like it was irish,and some of the other music played definitely was...

― robin (robin), Sunday, 7 September 2003 16:45 (twenty-two years ago)

"cool,thanks for the information
even if its not exactly what i heard,i'm sure it will be interesting...
any idea if any of this stuff is available anywhere,or where would be the best place to look?"

I imagine it's still available. You probably should just look around online. I haven't heard anything by O'Riada since that album from '95, but I'm sure he's still pretty active. I need to find out what he's been up to. The Riley/Rova collaboration is a challenging listen, but rewarding if you have the patience for it.

Another possibility is that what you heard was the Afro Celt Sound System. I've never heard them, but from what I've read they could fit your description as well. Look them up.

― Marcus Barr (Marcus Barr), Monday, 8 September 2003 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm surprised that you're surprised that Irish music would have a drone element.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Monday, 8 September 2003 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

no i've heard the afro celt sound system,its not them anyway...
to be honest,even though i'm irish i know very little about traditional irish music
the drone element isn't really in any of the stuff you'd hear most of the time over here,its all the equivalent of andrew lloyd weber or something,just to sell to tourists
i've never noticed a strong drone element in any of it

― robin (robin), Tuesday, 9 September 2003 00:36 (twenty-two years ago)

... you do have bagpipes in Ireland, don't you? Pretty drone I would say

― Dadaismus (Dada), Tuesday, 9 September 2003 10:42 (twenty-two years ago)

well there's uileen (sp?) pipes,not bagpipes
but you rarely hear that in what is presented as "traditional irish music"

― robin (robin), Tuesday, 9 September 2003 17:55 (twenty-two years ago)

ten years pass...

Parts of the new Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh album Music For An Elliptical Orbit sound closer to free jazz than any other trad I've heard.

Been thinking about starting a thread on how trad has interacted with the rest of music but I don't know if that's something that ILM is interested in. Like, there's a lot of good stuff happening at the moment, and I guess the basic roadmap goes Seán Ó Riada -> Planxty -> (Enya/Clannad though that feels like a different strand, the first Clannad album is really good btw) -> Afro-Celt -> now, but I'm ignorant of a lot of what else happened in between.

― dem bow dem bow need calcium (seandalai), Wednesday, 20 August 2014 21:47 (eleven years ago)

Different Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh piece, relevant to the thread though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR-_n2lWAVo

― dem bow dem bow need calcium (seandalai), Wednesday, 20 August 2014 21:48 (eleven years ago)

five years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rukIHD7rNY

― britain's secret sauce (seandalai), Sunday, 15 December 2019 20:56 (six years ago)

two years pass...

droney if not drone rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wif9RnARys

― TWELVE Michelob stars?!? (seandalai), Saturday, 9 April 2022 01:08 (four years ago)

three years pass...

Ok so I’ve been listening all afternoon to RÓIS and her two albums MO LÉAN and UISCE AGUS BEAN, particularly the former, which is a really amazing modern interpretation of Irish keening music. On her Spotify page she asks people to go to her Bandcamp page since Spotify doesn’t support artists, so I’ll send you there directly.

https://roismusicroismusic.bandcamp.com

― omar little, Monday, 12 January 2026 23:16 (four months ago)

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