Music review: Le Vent du Nord & De Temps Antan
Le Vent du Nord & De Temps Antan ****
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
We’d already enjoyed a near-incendiary warm-up from another septet, Session A9, with their beefy, boogie school of strathspey playing and a fiery spin on Gordon Duncan’s The Bellydancer. The French-Canadian quartet and trio – already linked by sharing two pairs of siblings in the Beaudry and Brunet brothers – cranked up the action further with their frenetic foot percussion and an instrumental mix including two fiddles, accordions, hurdy-gurdy and guitars, plus much lusty Québécois call-and-response singing.
This was delivered at the kind of skelp that was clearly designed to grab you by the scruff of the neck and hurl you round a Quebec kitchen. A little more explaining of some of the songs would have been welcome: they might be heralded by a demonic buzz of jaw harps, or the grainy strains of hurdy-gurdy, but there were some fine a cappella interludes, their muscular, warm-toned harmonies led by Pierre Luc Dupuis, Simon Beaudry or Nicolas Boulerice. Throughout, however, the irresistible rattle of flying feet rarely let up.