Shooglenifty - Troots

(January 2007) 10 tracks: McConnell's Rant * Excess Baggage * The Trim Controller * Charlie and The Professor * Loreen's Tune * Ful' Tae The Heid O' Troots * The Eccentric * The Patient Nurses * Walter C Douglas * Jane's Dance.

Shooglenifty are at the forefront of the folk/fusion Celtic music scene, with their trademark combination of superb musicianship, ensemble cohesion and inventiveness.

Three years after Tasmanian mandolin player Luke Plumb and bassist Quee McArthur joined the band, Troots is their most mature album to date, integrating acoustic melodies - performed by the frontline partnership of Angus Grant on fiddle alongside Luke - with contemporary grooves.

Recorded between tours of Australia, Europe and the USA in 2006, their fifth studio album Troots is a new collection of tunes composed by members of the band, as well as adaptations of a traditional (200 year-old) Scottish pipe tune and a Balkan folk song. All tunes were written and arranged by Shooglenifty (except Walter C Douglas by P/M Donald Macleod).

One track features the extraordinary vocals of North American Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis. Shooglenifty first met Tanya in the Canadian Yukon territory, where they were thrown together during a workshop at the Yellowknife Folk Festival.

They were reunited at the Salmon Arm Festival in the Canadian Rockies, where again the band and Tanya found their kindred spirits took the roof off the venue. Tanya's urgent otherworldly vocals meld uniquely with the band's rhythmic and melodic textures.

Angus Grant (fiddle), Luke Plumb (mandolin, bouzouki, tenor banjo, piano, guitar), Malcolm Crosbie (guitars), Garry Finlayson (banjos, banjax, guitar), Ranald (Quee) MacArthur (electric and double basses, programming) and James Mackintosh (traps kit, percussion, programming).

With Tanya Tagaq Gilles (vocals) and Kaela Rowan (vocals).

"The globetrotting Scots band demonstrate their musical ability and imagination in another album packed with their trademark melodic grooves... Troots once again proves Shooglenifty's talent for music rooted in home traditions but with proven international appeal." (Norman Chalmers, Scotland on Sunday)