Album Club, July 2018: Iona - 'Beyond These Shores'
The Album Club choice for July comes courtesy of Neil (Dalek Supreme DL) with Iona - "Beyond These Shores". As always please listen to the album in its entirety before you comment and/or vote.
Iona - Beyond These Shores (1993, UK, What Records WHAD 1300, Release Date1993, CD)
Iona was/is a progressive Celtic rock band from the United Kingdom, which was formed in the late 1980s by lead vocalist Joanne Hogg and multi-instrumentalists David Fitzgerald and Dave Bainbridge, later joined by Troy Donockley, playing the uilleann pipes, low whistles, and other instruments.
By the time Iona released their first self-titled album in 1990, drummer Terl Bryant, bassist Nick Beggs (formerly the bassist of Kajagoogoo), Fiona Davidson on Celtic harp, Peter Whitfield on strings, Troy Donockley on Uilleann pipes and percussionist Frank van Essen had joined the band. The first album Iona concentrated mostly on the history of the island of Iona, from which the band got its name.
Iona returned in 1992 with The Book of Kells, a concept album with several tracks based on pages from the eponymous book. Terl Bryant took over on drums and percussion for this album after the departure of Frank van Essen. Fitzgerald left the band that year to pursue a degree in music.
Beyond These Shores, the band's third album, was released in 1993 and included guest musician Robert Fripp. The album was loosely based on the legendary voyage of St. Brendan to the Americas before Christopher Columbus, but the band did not intend for it to be viewed strictly as a "concept album". Taken from: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona_(band))
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Not many seem to have heard of Iona which is a great shame as the band have produced many wonderful albums over the years, their last one being released in 2011. I suspect this maybe because they are viewed as being mainly a Christian band and while its certainly true that often their songs reflect that faith, to pigeon hole them as just being a Christian band would be to do them a massive diservice as frankly the quality of musicianship and song writing on offer, I feel, transend any such pigeon holing. Iona are a wonderful example of Celtic, folk, progressive rock some of whose members are Christians.
Beyond These Shoes is a beautiful, haunting, uplifting, deeply moving, and exhilarating listen, intricate passages of soaring guitars, intricate bass playing, swirling keyboards, stands along side simple folk instrumentation and Joanne Hogg's magical voice.
Its hard to pick particular tracks as better than others as all of them are excellent, so I won't. Please listen to them all.
I discovered Iona at just the right time as I got to see them play live twice, and both gigs were standouts for me. This band can do what you hear on record live and it was better.
For me this is a 9 out of 10 album. I find it incredibly moving and the track 'Beachy Head' in particular always makes me cry.
The album was re released in re mixed form by Open Sky Records in 2003. I prefer the original release
Album Club, July 2018: Iona - 'Beyond These Shores'
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