Alan Stivell – Reflets (Remastered) (1970/2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Alan Stivell – Reflets (Remastered) (1970/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 33:42 minutes | 357 MB | Genre: Folk, Celtic
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PIAS Recordings

Reflets is the debut album from Brittany musician Alan Stivell, a staunch champion of the Celtic harp, and the Celtic and Breton cultures. This cross-cultural endeavour is well flexed here on the multi-instrumentalist’s 1970 debut, beginning his reputation as a progenitor of world music, with banjo, electric organ, a choir, a fiddle and more detailing the broad spectrum of Stivell’s arrangements, and how they blended his Celtic roots and later foray into rock styles.

Reflets was Stivell’s debut full-length solo album, although he had done some obscure singles and EPs in France in the late 1960s and had recorded under his original name, Alan Cochevelou, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sometimes, when you find the first recording of a folk-rock-aligned artist dating from this era, you’ll be surprised to hear rock or even psychedelic elements that would be ironed out or disappear by the time the performer reached a wide audience. This, however, is not the case on Reflets, on which the format and vision that has sustained Stivell throughout his lengthy career are largely in place. His harp, by turns energetic and effervescent, is the focal point of arrangements that bow to contemporary but folk-based electric influences. True, there are touches of electric organ, electric bass, 12-string guitar, banjo, fiddle, and electric guitar. Yet the mood is very much pensive Celtic folk, all but two of the songs being folk standards adapted and arranged by Stivell; only one, “Sally Free and Easy,” is sung in English. “Broceliande,” one of just two Stivell originals on the LP, is the most adventurous (if atypical) track, with its “Exodus”-like melody and eerie female backup vocals. Although this was issued in the U.K. under the title Reflections in the early 1970s, it apparently never came out in the U.S., where it remains very hard to find. – Richie Unterberger

Tracklist:
1. Alan Stivell – Reflets (Version Remasterisée) (04:23)
2. Alan Stivell – Suite Des Montagnes (Version Remasterisée) (03:36)
3. Alan Stivell – Marig Ar Pollanton (Version Remasterisée) (03:46)
4. Alan Stivell – Broceliande (Version Remasterisée) (04:08)
5. Alan Stivell – Son Ar Chistr (Version Remasterisée) (02:28)
6. Alan Stivell – Sally Free And Easy (Version Remasterisée) (03:24)
7. Alan Stivell – Suite Irlandaise (Version Remasterisée) (03:06)
8. Alan Stivell – Sil Vestrig (Version Remasterisée) (03:03)
9. Alan Stivell – Tenval An Deiz (Version Remasterisée) (01:40)
10. Alan Stivell – Je Suis Né Au Milieu De La Mer (Version Remasterisée) (04:03)

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