Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, star of The Gloaming supergroup, says of Ryan Young: “He is an up-and-coming musician who is gaining more and more well-deserved recognition. I feel that he has the potential to make a very significant contribution to the Scottish tradition.” And beyond his carefully measured words, Hayes has gone on to produce Young’s third album, as well as play on a couple of tune sets, which means you can strike out “up and coming” and replace it with “fully arrived”.
And what an album it is – the playing, the discipline, invention and feel is exemplary. Young’s already scooped a bouquet of awards – most recently the Musician of the Year at the 2025 MG ALBA Scots Trad Awards – and the appropriately titled In the Quiet After sees him in fully relaxed control. There are understated but stellar contributions from guitarists Stuart McCallum of The Breath and Louis Campbell of the great Real World-signed folk duo Spafford Campbell, and Hayes joins Young on “The West Clare Reel / Joe Bane’s”, and “The Ships in Full Sail / Gallagher’s Frolics”, the first one of the album’s livelier, faster pieces, with both fiddles marching in unison, the latter a more stately pace, with more filigree and decoration. He also produced the album, recording live to capture the rich, associational textures of the music-making.
Album opener “The Skylark’s Ascension” begins with delicate acoustic guitar and a touch of reverb, Young’s fiddle easing though and filling in the space with a delicate, perfectly poised music the evokes the bird’s flight as potently as Vaughan Williams. It’s an absorbing, minimalist piece, heavily slowed down from its pipe tune source, a kind of dream music you’d prefer not to be awoken from. And so it is across a dream of an album. Irish reel “Jenny Dang The Weaver” has acoustic guitar and Young’s supple flights of imaginative fiddle sporting together, with fine, glistening touches of electric guitar creating a third, haunting presence. The nine-minute medley of “I Na’er Shall Wa’en Her/The Mist Covered Mountain” is a slow Scottish air that achieves something akin to stillness without actually falling silent, an almost Zen-like musical steady state that hovers in suspension, the guitars ease away for strikingly lyrical solo work from Young.
Scotland is not short on great fiddle players. With Young, there’s a new star in that firmament. His tour of England and Scotland this November, starting at Cecil Sharp House in London, promises some seriously pleasurable musical riches.
- Ryan Young tours the UK from 12 November
- More New Music reviews on theartsdesk
