DANIEL PATRICK QUINN is a young, Lancashire-based musician/ songwriter/ producer with (one assumes) Irish roots, who has made an evocative and folk-flecked debut album courtesy of "The Winter Hills."
Your reviewer is personally acquainted with walking the mysterious Pennines and North Lancashire hills, so this double CD (partly vocal-based and partly built purely on instrumental pulses) was bound to fire his imagination, but that's largely irrelevant, as Quinn invokes a mysterious, weatherbeaten landscape that's alluring to even the casual listener.
In many ways, "The Winter Hills" is a brave, and resolutely non-commericial move, with more than the occasional nod to the ancient world. Minimalism is certainly the key, with the tracks usually building from sparse, drone-y synth backing reminiscent of Nico and quietly coming to their (often open-ended) conclusions. Quinn plays all the instruments (synths, violin, cello, trumpet, bass and very spare drums) and gently adds and subtracts as the mood requires. The intention is to remain organic and computer-free and these creations largely benefit from this hardline approach.
As a rule, it works well to. The title track has a definite medieval lilt, which sounds unlikely, but is successful nonetheless, while "Of Things To Come" revels in its' mantra-style vocal and quasi-religious setting and "Pilgrims Way" is serene, full of longing and recalls Julian Cope at his most pastoral when he used to record amazing stuff like "Torpedo."
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The second CD, meanwhile, dispenses with the vocals altogether, and is - if anything - sparser and bleaker again. Stabs of trumpet give "For Her Atoms" and "The Stonecutter" an elegiac quality, while "Towards The Sun" momentarily threatens to turn dubby, but gradually falls away to just a tolling bell.
So far and so largely fantastic, then, although your reviewer parts company with the goodwill somewhat during the lengthy "Red Roads" and the equally time-consuming "A Coastal Journey," which wraps things up. Both have a jaunty, hypnotic quality, but also say all they really have to say within the three-minute mark and labour the point far too long.
Nonetheless, "The Winter Hills" is an intriguing first effort from a young talent who should be encouraged to plough the individualistic furrow he's tending here. The fact he's so resolutely out of step is something to be cherished rather than sneered at.
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