Caroline LeVelle is probably best known for her time as a member of the legendary group De Dannan during their golden years (early 80’s to early 90’s, alongside Dolores Keane and Mary Black).
‘A Distant Bell’ (released in 2004) is Caroline Lavelle’s self-produced, thirteen song Chamber Folk reinterpretation of English and Irish traditions.
The same deep well of folk material that inspired Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention is transformed by the lens of Lavelle’s pastoral romanticism as we travel with her from Medieval Sussex to 1960s Liverpool via the social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, the battle fields of the Napoleonic Wars and of 1915 Armenia.
She has been at the forefront of expanding those traditions into the field of Electonica via her work with Massive Attack (Home Of The Whale) and William Orbit (Moorlough Shore), Jam Nation (She Moved Through The Fair) and the Afro Celt Sound System.
‘A Distant Bell’ brings it all back home with thirteen songs that includes two versions if the Wicker Man soundtrack favourite ‘Gently Johnny’, Pentangle’s ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’ and Fotheringay’s ‘Banks Of The Nile’. Another stand-out is a luminous version of ‘Greenwood Laddie’ underpinned by David Bedford’s gorgeous arrangement for choir and orchestra.
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