XpatLoop.com - 2009 február 26

original: http://www.xpatloop.com/news/how_about_firkin

How About Firkin?

"What one mesures one’s life against, is mostly a mistery, hard to put a finger on. In most cases the spectrum of social expectations grow on us too hard to decide what we really want. Neverhteless, the Firkin were lucky in this matter. In our case, that measure happens to be Firkin. Firkin full of beer, or Firkin’ hell, or just Firkin of the moist Celtic lull of elemental power and rapture. We could say that we came from a poor district, were playing music just for fun, and realised our music reached out to a larger audience we expected, but this would be chinwagging rubbhish. We simply came together because we found our common measure in playing simple, energetic and at the same time melodious music, crisp and jumping, free of the strict boundaries of classical or jazz music, or the hard-to-digest high-brow of literature and stage drama for that matter. So we turned to playing a music that one cannot help dancing to, throwing gigs igniting combustion in the knees, firing shouts from the listeners’ throat with Firkin exciment. Classical music, jazz, theatre, literature, rock and roll are the walks from which Firkin has emerged, and in a way put aside for the passion of simplicity. Our flautist, PJ had grown up on classical flaute education before he turned to celtic music. Sushi our tomboy violinist can also play Vivaldi with acknowledged rigour if she wants to. Peti’s jazz background is all too obvious if we pay a bit of attention to his scales. Atti is a commited rock’n roll devil when it comes to playing his solos. Pali, singer and accousitc guitar man is a a professional theatre director in his ”spare moments”, which certainly shows on his presence. Ese on the drums has been around bands from Trash Metal to ethno and Barni, or, to be quite precise, myself, have wondered to the Celtic field through my educations in Irish litrature, and a Transylvanian background that I feel oddly congenial with the Irish spirit. Out of this wide spectrum of interests rose FIRKIN, a common denominator with strong inclination for the energy, the roughness, simplicity and beauty of Celtic punkrock, where the violinist can jump around without the canonized classical dry-pussy rigidity, where the bass can boost, the theatre director and the writer singer harlequin can play and shout each other’s head off, and the flautist can hop around with his flute without being dumbfounded by a stiff upper lip jury for doing so. That would be our jurisdiction: to throw one Firkin’ hell of a gig, whenever and wherever we get on stage. We certainly find Firkin’ great pleasure in doing so. Ladies and gentleFirks: Firkin never goes out of fashion, so long as humanity exists, if you know what I mean." B. M.

26.02.2009