Compass Records Group had announced the release of a special edition version of the Mulligan Records classic Andy Irvine/Paul Brady. In 1976, Irvine and Brady, fresh from the demise of the Irish supergroup Planxty, entered Rockfield Studios in Wales with mystic producer/bouzouki player Dónal Lunny and fiddler Kevin Burke to record what has become an Irish Music classic.
For nearly fifty years, this album has been regarded as of as one of the most important in the Irish music cannon and the music Irvine and Brady created has reached across genres to artists including Bob Dylan (who recorded Paul Brady’s arrangement of “Arthur McBride and The Sergeant”), Bono, Liam O’Maonlai (Hothouse Flowers), Radie Peat and Daragh Lynch (both of Lankum) and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
This 2022 special edition CD and LP release is the first time since the 1970s that an LP version has been pressed. Before pressing, the ten track album was remastered from the original analog tapes, which were transferred at 192k/32 bit to maintain the highest resolution and mastered with the best combination of classic analog and state of the art digital equipment. The packaging for both the CD and LP versions was approached with painstaking detail and features a tri-fold CD wallet and a gatefold LP.
Both formats also include a 12,000 word essay by noted music journalist Gareth Murphy (Cowboys and Indies – The Epic History of the Record Industry and Siren Song: My Life in Music [with Seymour Stein]) which tells the story of how the record came together and includes brand new interviews with Andy Irvine, Paul Brady, Dónal Lunny and Kevin Burke, as well as testimonials from artists including Glen Hansard, Liam O’Maonlai, Brian MacGloinn of Ye Vagabonds, Daragh Lynch of Lankum, Consuelo Nerea Breschi and Lucie Azconaga of Varo, PJ Curtis and more.
