Isa Gordon: 8Men album review – Pagan techno triumphs
Folk tunes revamped into electronic reveries and a selection of myth-laden covers comprise the second album from Isa Gordon. The result is a mesmerising and melancholic collection, says Fiona Shepherd
Ayrshire-born Isa Gordon has been immersed in Glasgow’s clubbing and electronica scene since moving to the city 14 years ago to study biomedical engineering. Creating her own music during lockdown, she was mentored by the late JD Twitch and released her debut album For You Only on his Optimo Music label in 2022. But electronica is only half the sonic story for Gordon. She grew up in Burns country and her roots are firmly in folk music, playing pipes and clarsach from a young age but mainly singing the standards. Her teenage listening also encompassed indie, emo, the glory of Bowie and even some classical music. All play a part in her musical mélange but she has mainly leaned into traditional song for 8Men, an eight-track offering which takes its title from a character in Flann O’Brien’s novel The Poor Mouth.
Inspired by her father’s old folk mixtapes, the first four pieces retool some of the traditional tunes she used to sing at folk sessions as hypnotic electronic reveries. They are complemented by four covers from the popular music canon, all written and performed by male artists who have influenced Gordon, all tapping into similar perennial elements and themes, characterised by her as ‘mini myths of the human condition’.
Opening track ‘I Wish, I Wish’ is a heavily autotuned rendition of Lizzie Higgins’ ‘What A Voice, What A Voice’, a song which was dramatically sampled by Martyn Bennett for his trailblazing Celtic club fusion track ‘Blackbird’. ‘Love Is Teasing’ (historically sometimes rendered as ‘Love Is Pleasing’) has been sung by the likes of Jean Ritchie and Shirley Collins. Those are big shoes to fill but Gordon’s vocals resonate with strength and melancholy, backed by mellow rock guitar and juddering synth drones. ‘Birken Tree’, a courting song thought to have been written by Paisley poet-weaver Robert Tannahill, is given a pagan techno spin, while ‘Young Edward’s more drastic patricide narrative is matched with dramatic drops and an epic electronic boost.
Her yearning, mesmeric rendition of Richard Thompson’s ‘Wheely Down’ (from his 1972 debut solo album) seems to belong in that timeless folk repertoire; Lou Reed’s ‘Street Hassle (Waltzing Matilda)’ less so. Instead, Gordon applies a minimal string arrangement by Harry Gorski-Brown and Sarah McWhinney to this urban tale of transactional sex. Robert Wyatt’s bewitching ‘Sea Song’ loses a little of its selkie mysticism in the retelling but retains an expansive aqueous atmosphere. Finally, Black Sabbath’s monumental ‘War Pigs’ is properly transformed by the gradual layering of disorientating synth arpeggios and fuzz guitar, while still sounding like a hopeless howl into the void.
8Men is released by Lost Map on Friday 20 March; main picture: Harrison Reid.