Little more than a year and a half after the release of their debut album, the part Manx, Scots, Irish and English trad folk group Ãmar have unveiled their second album, Avalanche.

The eagerly-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Afterlight came out on Friday, October 12, and, once launched at a sell-out concert in the band’s home town of Glasgow, Avalanche shot up to number one in the world music iTunes chart and generated many positive and glowing reviews.

The ten-track album sees the five-piece, including Manx fiddle player Tomas Callister and bouzouki player Adam Rhodes expand on their debut, and develop their sound, producing an album that has kept everything that made ’Afterlight’ such an engrossing and enjoyable debut, and adding a more cohesive, polished and, if it was possible, a more confident element.

The album is packed with fast, driving tunes, bouncing, infectious reels and slow, beautiful melodic numbers, highlighting individual skills of each player,bringing together Tomas’ fiery fiddle playing, the lightning fast concertina, courtesy of Mohsen Amini, and the gloriously atmospheric work of flautist, whistle-player and piper Ryan Murphy, supported by Adam’s understated and flawless bouzouki and the leaping, pulsing rhythms from Adam Brown’s bodhran.

Any hint of extra pressure being put on the group after Ãmar won the Horizons award, and Mohsen was named musician of the year at this year’s BBC Radio 2 folk awards, was quickly dispelled.

’It feels great, so easy to make music with these lads and we’ve had a total blast doing it,’ said Tom.

’It’s a cool feeling to know that people are excited about your music. Sometimes you worry if people will enjoy your new material, but it’s so fun and that makes it manageable.’

Said Adam: ’When we first came together and recorded our first album, we were still very new to playing together as a band.’

’Although we came up with a great CD, I think since then we’ve honed our sound a bit more and know what works best with our instrumentation. We also recorded the first album entirely ourselves, so it’s been great to work with other people on this new album to create something different.’

Ãmar enlisted the help of Donald Shaw, from the folk legends Capercaillie, to help with arranging the album and to add an extra depth to their already rich sound.

’Avalanche is a lot more dynamic compared to our debut album,’ said Adam. ’I think our sound has matured and developed a lot over the last few years, whilst not betraying what made our earlier music work so well.’

Despite the clear progression of their sound, Imar’s music still has a beating Manx heart.

Tom is one of three top composers in the group, alongside Ryan and Mohsen, and his obvious Manx influence takes an equal footing with the others backgrounds, steeped in traditional Irish and Scots music.

’Wise man’ is based around one of Tomas’ own tunes, written about one of his ancestors, John Creeney, who Tom says lived to a grand old age of 99, and is one of many pieces of music that is rooted deep within Tom and Adam’s Manx roots.

The evocative White Strand is named after the beach, north of Tom’s hometown of Peel and Rambling Man, features ’Kennaugh’, a tune dedicated to late great Roy Kennaugh, who sadly passed away in December, and also an original Manx tune, Garey Ford, written by Peddyr Cubberley.

’This new album has a lot more original music on it compared to our debut,’ said Adam.

’We’ve still a couple of tunes on the album written by other people, including one from Peddyr, a great Manx tune writer.

’But although there aren’t any other strictly Manx tunes on the album, the Isle of Man still influences our music a lot.

’Tom either composed or part composed a lot of the music on the album, and if you look at the tune names you can see that, with names such as "Ben My Chree", part of the "Wise man" set, and "White Strand".

’Although Ãmar isn’t a Manx band as such, we feel it’s really important to keep that Manx connection there. Myself and Tom were both brought up on the island, it’s where we call home, and it’s where we discovered our love for trad music’

’The Isle of Man and Manx music plays a huge role in Ãmar, influencing all our compositions,’ added Tom.

Ãmar have recently returned from their first tour across the USA, and have just embarked on a series of launch gigs in the UK and Paris, after which they will return to some of their other bands and projects.

However, they will regroup in early spring next year and, with extensive tours of the UK, Ireland, Europe and the USA already booked, the stage is set for Ãmar to go from strength to strength, to build on their reputation, created out of friendship, musical excellence and the constant, hard grafting of touring, and to become a group that is unstoppable and unavoidable.

In many respects, like an avalanche.

by Mike Wade

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