Primitive Dance

Album artwork and sleeve notes available to download from here.

"After 'Back to the Centre' I put a new band together and we toured Ireland, the UK, Germany and Holland. When it was time to go back into the studio, I went over to England, because that's where the band lived, and we started to work on what eventually became 'Primitive Dance'. The record was later recorded in Dublin and was produced by Ian Maidman. Ian was in my touring band and the excitement of his playing and his enthusiasm for my music made it seem like a natural choice to have him help me make the record.
The other musicians, Steve Fletcher, Tim Goldsmith and Mick Bolton went on to tour with me for a year or two. It's funny, having remastered this record I find that there's a lot of stuff I originally felt unsure about that I now actually love. To be honest I found this record one of the hardest to deal with because it was the end of the eighties and there was this really hard sound in fashion. Everything had "top" put on it. So it was originally a 'spiky' sounding record - but now that we've softened all that, the warmer stuff is coming out. I can actually hear things now I couldn't hear before.
My favourites tracks are 'Soul Commotion', 'The Awakening' with Maire Ni Bhraonain of Clannad on vocals and the massed violas of Geoffrey Richardson, 'The Game of Love' featuring some classic guitar from Mark Knopfler, 'Steal Your Heart Away' and 'Eat The Peach', a re-recording of the song I wrote with Donal Lunny for the film of the same name featuring Davey Spillane on crazed uileann pipes. I think it sounds particularly good now it's been remastered.