For three years, Milkweed have refined a formula – taking existing source material (a folklore journal, a book on Welsh myths, another on bronze age human remains), cutting up the words and feeding them through a woodchipper of lo-fi production and experimental folk music.
This time, however, they decided to push themselves further – to use all 400 pages of Thomas Kinsella’s masterfully stark translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, rather than manipulated snippets.
After it took an entire year just to process 20 pages, however, the band found themselves humbled, and ended up only getting as far as the Remscéla of their new record’s title – a collection of independently transmitted ‘pre-stories’ that provide necessary context to what is to follow.
With Milkweed having applied energy befitting a 400-page epic to just the fragments of the Remscéla, the record bristles with more lifeforce than anything the band have yet produced. The band have raised the bar when it comes to their production, the blend of manipulated vocals, eerie beats and potent instrumental scraps twisting around each other like a thick, potent smoke.