They might bear the tools of the folk musician and be partial to the odd traditional tune, but Spiro claim to have closer affinities to the worlds of contemporary classical and dance music than they do to the folk scene.
This four-piece contemporary ensemble take a meticulous approach to composition and performance, creating a sound much greater than their parts (accordion, mandolin, acoustic guitar and violin) would suggest.
Their music - as heard on Lightbox is sweeping, majestic and cinematic, marking them out as kindred spirits with Steve Reich, Michael Nyman and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It's a unified but never uniform sound, one made by four virtuosic musicians pulling in the same direction and keen to provoke an emotional response in anyone within earshot. "We're like a string quartet," they explain, "but the most driving and exciting string quartet that you could imagine."
...The Bristol Band are imbued in the culture of informal sessions and you assume this is another album of dance tunes with a strong English feel. But within the fiddle/mandolin/guitar/accordian framework rhythms go haywire, tunes somersault and the sound adopts darker, edgier twists. Refreshingly unnerving.
Beguiling and Often Complex
SPIRO belong at the more experimental end of the acoustic folk scene, where the idioms of English folk music meet the strategies of contemporary minimalism and systems music. The emphasis is entirely on ensemble playing, in which traditional soloing is replaced by a constantly shifting focus on different instruments within the whole. The chugging, insistently repeating rhythms and strands of clearly folk-derived melody are interweaved in tightly arranged patterns to beguiling and often complex effect. The obvious empathy between violinist Jane Harbour, pianist and accordion player Jason Sparkes, mandolin player Alex Vann and guitarist Jon Hunt, which underlies that intricacy of execution is all the more impressive when you consider that the disc was recorded live in the studio, with no overdubs.
Press review from: The Scotsman (UK)
Emotionally Charged and Spirit Reviving
...The album is a beautifully recorded statement of Spiro's musical world where arrangements that might befit anthemic rock music are harnessed around thematic tunes that somehow tell their own wordless story, elaborated with insistence and the cosmic precision of an antique astrolabe. The results sound classical and folky, ancient and modern and (above all) emotionally charged and spirit-reviving.
Press review from: Venue Magazine (UK)
Breathtakingly moving
While all critics and fans so far have been keen (and correct) to point out the parallels here between Spiro and systems music specialists such as Steve Reich or with other contemporary folk(ish) ensembles like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, there is a USP to Spiro's music. For one, it is far closer to folk traditions than it almost dares to admit. The rather arbitrary division of traditional and modern forms erroneously denies the linear heritage; for what is a jig or a reel, if not systems music before the term was coined? Secondly, their adherence to scales and instrumentality that all come with attendant rural connotations means that it takes a while to realise that this is staggeringly complex stuff.
Partly produced by Simon Emmerson, the man behind the Imagined Village project, Lightbox has no solos and no showboating, but considerable skill. Much like King Crimson's gamelan-like explorations in the 80s, this is cerebral music, precise and well thought out. If that makes you think of something cold and unfeeling, you'd be wrong.
Melodies that bleed through the warp and weft as on Underland or The White hart can be breathtakingly moving, and their ear for understanding how to build something towards a dazzling climax means that even if you don't experience them on disc, you should most definitely catch them live. Without a doubt it'll be quite a spectacle.
Press review from: BBC Online (UK)
Melodically Inventive and Emotionally Compelling
...Intense and minimal, they roll out complex arrangements with such ease that you feel your heart lift a few inches above its normal resting place....Melodically inventive and emotionally compelling, this is a fantastic record.
Press review from: The Word (UK)
Sophisticated and adventurous.
The folk scene - or rather, the experimental acoustic folk-influenced scene - is becoming increasingly sophisticated and adventurous, and Spiro are leading exponents of this new genre. They are an instrumental quartet, playing guitar, accordion, violin and mandolin, who rework traditional folk melodies into stirring, rhythmic and often complex pieces that make use of the repeated phrases and patterns of systems music. In some ways, they are like a British folk answer to the Penguin Cafe Orchestra - though with a less exotic musical lineup - while echoing the tight interplay of that brilliant acoustic folk trio Lau. The quartet have developed a style in which there are no improvised solos, just tight arrangements in which the various instruments all provide the melodies and rhythmic settings. The mood is always changing, from the drifting and lyrical I Fear You Just As I Fear Ghosts (they specialise in memorable titles) to the slinky and jaunty Antrobus. This would be great film soundtrack music - and I mean that as a compliment.
Press review from: The Guardian (UK)
There are few English folk records of the sublime individuality of Lightbox.
New music (mostly) with its roots deep in the music of the British Isles, Spiro give a modern twist to traditional dance (that's dance as in John Playford's Dancing Master, circa 1651).
Not by anything as obvious as electrification or eccentric instrumentation - the quartet of strings plus squeezebox remain resolutely acoustic.
No, Spiro's achievement is to combine clarity of line with a driving rhythm.
Folksy melodies repeat and ripple and interweave to form an intricate sonic mesh, while the sweeping rhythms invoke minimalist music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
The results have the hallucinatory effect of trance, albeit trance with incredible vitality.
Not many English folk records find their way onto Peter Gabriel's Real World label, but then there are few English folk records of the sublime individuality of Lightbox.
Press review from: Manchester Evening News (UK)
Compelling, strangely soulful music of mind and body.
Ultra-detailed arrangements. Lots of forward drive. No affect. It's folk music of a kind, rooted geographically in the English West Country, but not as you'd expect it to sound.
It steams from point A to whatever point it's going to with all the train-like persistence of a Steve Reich composition. In pieces such as "I Fear You Just as I Fear Ghosts" it exhibits other properties, which pulsate with gospel trenchancy. An oddly compelling, strangely soulful music of mind and body.
Press review from: The Independent (UK)
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