Lau are three highly individual and extremely gifted musicians - Martin Green (accordion and electronics) Aidan O’Rourke (fiddle, fx) and Kris Drever (vocals, guitars). For a decade they have been stretching folk music's boundaries further and exploring new musical territory with each release and concert tour.
2012’s 'Race The Loser' album was nominated for Scottish Album of the Year and featured in many critics best of year lists. Lau appeared on BBC TV’s Later... with Jools Holland extending their audience considerably in the process and won their fourth BBC Radio Folk Award for Best Group a few months later.
***** The Guardian Albums of the Year **** MOJO **** Observer
**** Songlines **** The Morning Star ******** UNCUT 8/10
Lau have since curated three multi-artist weekend festivals called Lau-Land and collaborated with a myriad of other musicians including legendary Cream bassist Jack Bruce, underground electronica collective Hacker Farm and more recently (at Barbican London), Norwegian jazz pioneer Bugge Wesseltoft, Germany's jazz- deep house producer/DJ Henrik Schwarz and Dan Berglund, (bassist with the seminal Esbjörn Svensson Trio).
‘This is post-rock-electronica-modern-folk – or post-folk, perhaps!’
***** MusicOMH
In the last two years Lau have travelled extensively all over the world.
South Korean and Japanese experimental music scenes intrigued and found some influence upon their new music. The most profound influence though came from a trip to New York. Downtown, Lau absorbed themselves in a music scene rich with avant-garde and contemporary classical and folk music. Lau returned to Scotland determined to include something of this ethos into their next album.
‘The most celebrated modern folk band in the UK’ Brooklyn Vegan
For their new album, the Elysian Quartet, a group that share Lau’s fearless desire to create something new through improvisation, will feature and the new recordings are produced by Brooklyn based artist and multi-instrumentalist Joan Wasser (Joan As Police Woman). What comes next from Lau promises to be their greatest musical recorded statement yet.
"It’s all becoming a bit “water is wet“, isn’t it, saying how brilliant Lau are. But what else to do? Their name means “natural light” in Orcadian, which seems about right, except their vaulting, endlessly innovative take on contemporary chamber folk evokes every conceivable shade of darkness, too, and all the colours in between. Simply extraordinary"
★★★★★ The Arts Desk
