The Olllam – Norton’s, Birmingham: Live Review – on the barrier

Ollam – with more publications than Picket Fence: Post Rock, Post Funk, Post Trad and Post Grunge. Eclectic file.

The Ollam – Norton’s, Birmingham – February 6, 2025

Ability or chaos?

It’s hard to understand, but the world is really crazy when a place is closed when neighbors quote noise, especially when these neighbors are a backpack hostel. As in the type of people who need to be the noisy audience in the right place of the self -name. This meant the last minute transfer, from the already closed RMBL to Norton’s, with enough time to post and plan accordingly. So from the audience 500 plus elsewhere, it was a much more selected gathering, maybe 100 or more, a victory for me, I always preferred intimate over Angsty.

Olam’s story

I was largely there for the group’s front line, Tin Whistles and Uillean Pipes, but it seems that many of the other members of the group have been drawn more, so a small exposure may be needed. Olllam, 3 L’B, were originally producing the producer of WhizzKid, Tyler Duncan, a producer for artists as diverse as Carly Rai Jepson and Michigan Funkers, Vulfpeck. However, in 1999 and 2000, he was the Uillean Pipes All-heger Champion, the first American winner. His idea was to attract this distinctive taste in the various styles, which he had also mastered later.

The recruitment of the first John McSeri, the pipes and the MAVEN for Lúnasa and the Donal Lunny’s Coolfin, the highest level of rhythm was needed. Michael Schimmine is a percussionist in search that can be stirred without effort between genres, specialty somewhere between jazz and folk, with Joe Darth the bassist for the above Vulfpeck, Poster Boy for the group, where his flea bass runs are the main call card. Add to Seán O’meara to the guitar and Detroit producer Joe Hettite on keys and there is a room for a little for synthesis and more, much more to divide. Since Duncan is now too stretched to enter the live group in his schedule, his role in the group has already been taken by the best, Ross Ainsley of Glasgow, also in whistles. We like him and he is no stranger to apply his talents outside the box.

First …

… It was an o’mert, multi -tasking for the night and his group. Fresh since his debut solo edition, his set largely covers his own songs, he sings and plays an electric guitar. Everything within a rock -dull form that is a little more muscular than the disc. His group of keyboards, bass and drums was tight enough to give the material a decent spitting and polishing. He asked the audience if they liked the traditional (Irish) music, in fact, in fact, if with a little presentation of her own love for her, but she made the way to the main dish without insult.

The lights down and never rose, stepped on the group of 9. McSeri and Einsley were placed in the front, central scene and on the side, facing each other in wooden chairs. Keyboards to the left, drums behind them, with Darth and O’Mmer, which embark on the other side of the stage, now has announced an acoustic guitar. With a complex and interconnected rear, Shimmin’s drums crashed high and resonant, they were excluded, the two whistles, sparring in unison, two musicians, one heart rate. Such was the sound balance that every instrument was clearly heard in the mixture, which allows the listener to immerse and go out, effortlessly, from what is played and from who, regardless of the basic thrust of the tune.

Who to look at most

Opening with, Lllow the Sun, first since 2022, “The Elllegy, their 2nd disc, it was difficult to understand which one to watch. The song begins with some slow keys before Shimmin gets into a solid model, lighting the blue touch paper for the rest of the tape. Acoustic or not, the o’mer looked like a man, oppressed, their hands wander for their tool, chord and sliding, as if in abandonment. Meanwhile, Shimmin, downplaying his tiny set, was killing Beyas from him, with the precision of an advanced military rattle, as the arrow was throwing fingers on all his boat, notes were taken into a counterpoint attack. As they really were the Hetta of the keys, so much that you forget the central dynamo that feeds all the clothing. Except you couldn’t. The play, or more recently, whistles, never looked so hip and vital.

Calm but complicated compositions

This template, the greater part of the set, included this type of message, folk, funters, jazz, all equally entrained. Adhering to Exillle’s dream of the same album, it was entirely the inability to classify or contextualized the initiative so caused and alive. Again, it seems that the keyboards offer a completely different treat before they summon the nearby guitar and bass of the city of Joeburg, then the whistles are recruiting from another planet. It should not join, but it does as if everything is completely normal. The older song, Follly of Wisdom gave O’meara a little more freedom to shine between McSherry and Ainslie’s telepathic symmetry. Bar the two whistles, the intention of their instruments only that the rest of the group was smiling at each other and every musical surplus, showed how calm they were with these complex compositions.

Until now, you will hang up what they call their tunes, or it is that everyone, adding the extra LS, for L, if you will. So, for the arrows that kill that they are the first McCersry moved to Uillaen Pipes, they are waiting in his lap only that moment. Have you ever wondered how the pipes could appear in the Groove Drive Soul-Jazz, the type of song that would accompany the speed boats competing through the 1970 cops? The answer is as if invented for the genre. Since McSherry already used both tools for free, Ainslie also switched the size and key of his whistle, only my slow consumption of Galway Red gave all the hint of the passage of time, so swallowing the stage notion.

Miami’s complete vice

Particularly beloved, a stream of Sillver came in about an hour, an almost hypnotically driven number, Shimmin, which seems to not move the muscle, with the ears of the audience revealing the truth. Darth’s bass was bumping and bubbling for those Stacato rhythms, and he wants you to smile, making you smile. I think this song Hitenga went to the full deputy in Miami, into an extended wig, turning that smile a smile. A brief repression comes for a funeral stone, a soft piece, free from shock, until shimmin does not bolts of a recurring burial rat a tat. Smile to smile at pure shock and awe. Completely transfixing.

The essence of the group

Sona, from the latest album by the German producer of ZedD, receives a function afterwards, given that Olllam was included on it and for it. To be honest, the main Olram sounds, not the Prime Zedd, I was to know how it sounds, but the set is slowly winding, with the applicable and expected outbursts of solo from the rhythm section. Shimmin hugged this more than his roommates, and his rudimentary set, proving the old saying about the less, is more. It is strange that I expected Darth to take advantage of his bar or so, but one could claim that he solo and anyway. By announcing three signs of a bad person as the last song, the rhythm of numbness manages to re -match the vibration of Sharp Suited Shenanigans with Pony Caps in Ballyclare. This is the essence, maybe the group.

Given the fact that we are still shy for the full 90 minutes, it was both a conclusion, so the warlike rejection of everything else that guaranteed a bis, with the six musicians returning for the final gluing of the glass bridge near the damn this is their signature of signature and adaptable end to an exceptional evening. Reject any tribalism aside, there is something for everyone here.

Here is that GLLLASS bridge, with the earlier Duncan Inclusive Line-up of the group.

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