Alternative folk six-piece Madra Salach today share their debut single ‘Blue & Gold’. Between constant gigging with slots supporting Kim Deal and festivals including Electric Picnic, Beyond The Pale and 4 particularly raucous sets (one at 4am) at All Together Now Festival among others, a word of mouth buzz saw feverish crowd responses to songs set to be released over the next few months.
Recently snapped up by T-Time for management, Dublin’s Madra Salach have scheduled performances at tastemaker festivals Left of the Dial, Live At Leeds, The Great Escape: First 50 and a highly anticipated One’s To Watch slot at The George in Shadwell, London on 14 October.
Madra Salach met whilst playing in different outfits on the city’s indie scene and bonded over a shared love of the Irish traditional canon which led to them playing impromptu pub sessions. Taking inspiration from the growing experimental folk scene in Ireland, the group added members, instruments and electronic elements to emerge with their own compositions, which are at the same time strikingly modern and written with a voice that could have emerged at any point throughout the last century. Today, they release the first of these songs, ‘Blue & Gold’, which draws on band leader Paul Banks’personal reflections on a ritual from his early twenties, a scratch card daydream turned modern alt-folk anthem. He further explains:
“In the absence of any lucrative career path or generational wealth, I started habitually buyingscratch cards in the hope of running into a small fortune in my early twenties. I usually opted for a €2 All Cash, a small ticket coloured blue and gold. My ‘get rich quick’ scheme proved unfruitful, but I did get a song out of it.”
Madra Salach are: Paul Banks (vocals), Adam Cullen (guitar), Jack Martin (mandolin/tinwhistle/synth), Maxime Arnold (harmonium), Dara Duffy (drums), and Jack Lawlor (bass).
For more information on Madra Salach please check their instagram.