Daniel Padden & co mix Renaissance dance, nervous canter and seasick lament in brave new album
Reference points for The One Ensemble might include the 1970s prog-folk of Comus or A Hawk and A Hacksaw’s more wayward forays into Eastern Europe, but Daniel Padden and his gifted cohorts occupy a wild isthmus of their own.
Alasdair Roberts/Tattie Toes percussionist Shane Connolly brings a rhythmic urgency to proceedings, switching from stately Renaissance dance to nervous canter on ‘The Farthest West’ as Padden conjures apocalyptic visions of mountains falling from ‘the skies of Morocco’. Cyril Tawney’s classic ode to bad navy food, ‘Chicken On A Raft’, is transformed into a seasick lament, all queasy accordion and squalling strings, while the title track moves through jaunty medievalisms and doom riffs to conclude in a starkly beautiful Gregorian chorale.