Irish multi-instrumentalist Declan Haughian marries windswept Gaelic folklore with sophisticated, ecstatic post-rock, and moodsetting spoken word to premiere new project Ceann Capaill and inaugural EP Gathering for a Gathering.

“I grew up in a rural Irish community which still retains the visible effects of colonial takeover,” writes Haughian. “A stunning place of scenic beauty and unmatched community spirit, but with a strong undercurrent of resentment, handed down by the people who came before us and the people before them.” Through his compositions, his project Ceann Capaill asks the questions of how this came to be and how to come to terms with it now. His music reflects this dichotomy of sublimity and tension with searching, soaring maximalism offset against rarefied and radical tenderness.

Ceann Capaill, and this EP, “began with old tapes stored in dusty roofspaces, handed down to us by family and friends. We used the audio as a theme and a grounding to which the music belongs.” The piece opens with a cacophonous swell of free noise that brings to mind Jeff Parker’s more out-there moments, before a sudden halt reveals a delicate heart within the chaos. Tape hiss and looped piano underpin a new movement of breathtaking prettiness, in which Haughian’s clarinet peaks out as sunrays through a redolent Emerald fog of clouded guitar, bass guitar, drumkit, and vocal samples telling long forgotten ancient secrets. It is edged with bittersweet melancholia, especially as old Gaelic singing emerges from the haze, taken from those treasured family tapes now in Haughian’s possession.