Veil Sophia Speaks CD

A flickering campfire, deep in the woods...shadowy figures leaping and dancing around and around it. Music from the fringes of your experience comes drifting through the trees, bearing the scent of exotic incense and half-remembered glimpses of ancient rituals and celebrations. The glimmer of silver and magical jewels, the rustle of velvets and laces...the lilt of strange, beautiful songs, telling of forbidden loves, ancient goddesses, distant seas. Now the music breaks into a lively, sinuous dance, and lithe figures dart and caper through the air...Unbidden, you are drawn closer, and your body begins to move with the beat... Some say that a brief doorway to such places is opened when The Veil plays. Celtic cohorts Mark Ungar and Deirdre McCarthy had spent years exploring and performing Irish and English folk music, working not only in a traditional acoustic context but also syncretizing the old sounds with the electric textures of rock. In The Veil, they are assimilating new influences and instruments while retaining their Celtic and rock roots. They decided to pursue a project in which music suitable for a ritual situation would be created, music which would summon and harmonize energies and allow listeners to reach an exalted state. Shortly thereafter, they met M....Margarita Kovats brings her prolific and prophetic writing skills to the mix and a mesmeric, evocative narrative voice to the recordings. A member of a caste of poets from a far planet, she has brought her talents to our own for an extended stay. An adept at the lost art of Writing with Ink, her lyrics provide a matrix around which the members of The Veil weave their sensual vibrations.Multi-instrumentalist Mark Ungar utilizes the droning, sonorous qualities of a 95-year-old mandocello named "Grampa" to provide both bass grooves and melody, as well as bass, electric and acoustic guitars, electric sitar, mandola, plectrum banjo, and vocals. Percussionist Deirdre McCarthy, long a respected player of the traditional Irish drum the bodhran, has been steadily incorporating a variety of other instruments into her kit, including doumbek, ashiko, tupan and bomba leguera. Deirdre also sings lead and harmony vocals, including lyrics in Slavonic and melodies gleaned from the liturgy of the Russian Byzantine Catholic church. Scott Irwin lends his expertise on drum kit to the mix, and Cat Taylor adds her sinuous electric violin to several tracks.