Mec Lir – Livewire

Genre-busting quartet Mec Lir exploded onto the Celtic music scene in 2014 with their debut release Not An EP, launched during their first appearance at one of the world’s largest Celtic music festivals, Festival Interceltique de Lorientin Brittany. Since then they went on to release two singles in 2016, have appeared at festivals all around the world and even featured on a viral social media video that has amassed over 2.5 million views!

This bold and exuberant Isle of Man/Glasgow based band has a stellar line-up, consisting of virtuosic Manx fiddle player Tomas Callister (Ímar), along with fellow Manx musicians Adam Rhodeson bouzouki (Ímar), David Kilgallonon keyboard (Chronicles), and Scotland’s Greg Barryon drums (Elephant Sessions).

They have spent the last three years quietly writing and recording new material for what is their first full length album, Livewire, released in December 2020. With the global events over the last year proving to be extremely difficult for the live music industry, Mec Lir decided to take advantage of this downtime and produce something really special, to bring 2020 to a close with a bang.

Well known for their tight, lightning fast playing and huge sound, Mec Lir’s main intention is to create music that allows the listener to feel happy and have a good time. Fun really is the aim of the game here, there’s very little in Mec Lir’s music meant to be taken too seriously.

If you strip back the synths, drums and bass, you will find at the core of these complex (and often verging-on outrageous!) arrangements a set of trad tunes that would be accepted by even the most traditional of session players. That being said, add everything back into the mix and you’ll experience something difficult to classify other than simply ‘Mec Lir’.