Since his 2001 debut album of Irish instrumentals, Solo Fiddle, US folk artist Sam Amidon has been twisting and tenderising traditional music. At times, he’s bared its bones, at others broiled it together with jazz, chamber orchestra arrangements, and even minimalist covers of Mariah Carey songs (on 2013’s Bright Sunny South). The Following Mountain is his first album of largely original compositions, and it provides constant, jolting surprises.
There’s the warm improvised piano bursting in on the home-recorded roughness of Fortune, the weirdly ambient pop shimmers and woodwind on Gendel in 5 (you feel the hand here of producer and regular Brian Eno collaborator Leo Abrahams), and the tough percussive backing to Blackbird, a reworking of Scots ballad What a Voice. The album ends with the free-jazz explosion of April and at times the playfulness feels exorbitant, but it mostly feels enlivening. Not an easy listen then, but a deeply rewarding one.
