Arun Sood and Angeline Morrison: Donn/Dubh review – British folk giants startlingly transform sacred histories

Two of Britain’s most exciting folk musicians, both of Hebridean heritage, are behind Donn/Dubh (Brown/Black), an album inspired by Saltair na Rann, a 10th-century Celtic collection of cantos in which sacred history is foretold, and winds are given colours. Angeline Morrison and Arun Sood expand its spectrum of northerly and westerly shades, soldering together traditional Gaelic texts and tunes with distortion, drone, dream-pop and post-rock.

The pair have the chops for such a project. Morrison, co-founder of the Black British Folk Collective, has brilliantly brought forgotten Black histories into the folk canon for years, including on 2022’s The Sorrow Songs. That same year, Sood’s Searching Erskine used sonic collage and old recordings to conjure the lives of residents on his grandmother’s abandoned home island of Vallay. Their talents converge around Alastair Smith’s startling production: Morrison’s deep voice, ghostly one moment, lullaby-warm the next, inhabiting soundworlds recalling the shuddering shadows of late-90s Boards of Canada and Unkle.

But Morrison opens A Rìbhinn a Bheil Cuimhn’ Agad (Young Maiden, Do You Remember?) over a softly played piano, and gentler moments like this anchor the pair’s giddy explorations. So does a 1952 recording of Sood’s uncle psalm-singing on Òran Molaidh (Praising Song), bowed cellos and synths buoying him, before Sood’s rich Scottish voice enters, speaking of a time “before God”.

Sweeter moments include Mo Nighean Donn As Bòidhche (My Most Beautiful Brown-Haired Girl), rippling by on shimmering electronics, and Teann A-nall Mo Chailin Donn (Come Here, My Brown-Haired Maid), setting a Uist love song against gauzy, Twin Peaks-worthy walls of synthesisers. The album’s darker turns are powerful: Tha Mi Sgìth (Fairy Song) twists Sood’s daughters’ voices into Boards of Canada-adjacent folk horror. Full of febrile layers, this album’s ambitions unpeel with every tantalising listen.

Also out this month

Live at Dingle’s 1974 (self-released) is the first official release from London folk singer Clive Woolf, whose career ended at 28 after a debilitating brain illness. Recorded just weeks before he stopped playing, it captures the singer and guitarist’s soulful spirit, especially on a stunning a cappella Low Down in the Broom (now in his 80s, he still attended the Cecil Sharp House folk club as a listener until the pandemic). Goblet sound like the wayward offspring of Milkweed and the Focus Group, and Elfgiffu House is their debut album on an exciting new London DIY label (Circle Dance). Led by Amy Lawrence, her project imagines a future Cornish utopia through eerie vocal ensembles, recorders, kelhorns and Breton bombardes. Cinder Well’s A Blooming Body (Hen House Studios) finds the US artist wading into starker waters following her successful theme tune for Small Prophets, although her grasp of Americana glows on the gorgeous Of Nettles and Roses.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.