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15 October 2003
Various Artists, The Rough Guide to Scottish Music (World Music Network)
Whether foreign or familiar, I have yet to meet a Rough Guide music compilation that I didn't like. You can choose to treat them as solid compilations that usually stand on their own, and/or you can use them as a springboard for some of the vast, countless worlds of music that parade our existence. This hour-long, modern Celtic chapter carries on the Rough Guide consistency, albeit not as glowingly. There is enough bagpipe, fiddle and mouth organ to shuffle anyone's kilt, not to mention the wealth of harrowing vocals and ruminative musings that seem to beckon the grayness of lengthy winters. Bands such as Blazin' Fiddles and the Battlefield Band do their best to heat things up with lush harmonies and shivering tempos. Yet, please feel free to call me thick, but after a few listens much of it starts to sound a bit too similar. Or, too depressing, I don't know. Plus, c'mon Scotland, where's that wicked Gaelic rap song about haggis?!
— Matt Rogers
.: posted by Editor 10:51 AM
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