Real Music
New Age, 1997

It’s interesting how they later reissued this CD with a white horse on the cover art, heh. My original copy doesn’t have any horse. At any rate, Ceredwen is a duo comprising Renée Gray and Andrew Fryer. Ò’r Mabinogi is their debut and it sees several old Welsh folklore being set to music. While the instruments used are decidedly modern (keyboards, drum machines) and there are some vocal effects here that may offend purists, the end result is a collection of music that is reminiscent of… well, just think of a more energetic version of Clannad.

The songs generally have a hypnotic chant-like beat to them, with a catchy melodious hook often being repeated again and again until it is nearly impossible to get them out of my head. There is a similar vibe to the songs that can be simultaneously attractive and distracting. It’s a good thing because on the whole, the songs make pleasant ear candy, especially with Ms Gray’s soothing and lovely vocals on these tracks, but at the same time, the songs tend to blur together after a while.

My favorite track is Dial Bendigeidran, but really, the other nine tracks are most enjoyable as well. If you are a fan of new age Celtic music, you may like Ò’r Mabinogi as well.