Various Artists - Bring Your Own Hammer Presents...From The Tombs Various Artists

Bring Your Own Hammer brings historians and composers together to create new and original songs based on historical sources and to re-interpret song material rooted in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the Irish Diaspora. From the Tombs is a barnstorming double album that takes the listener on a journey through the history of crime, law and order in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora in the long nineteenth century. It has an incredible range of styles with superb pop songs, folk ballads, cinematic instrumentals, sean nós, an extended spoken word piece and more.

It is a challenging, provocative and - in the best possible way - a sprawling record that captures something of the uncertain spirit of the times and people it focuses on. Indeed, the world you encounter on the record is a somewhat odd one (people accused of transforming themselves into hares to steal butter from cows, a man who collects shrunken heads, an old blind man taunted for selling his wife, a conman pretending to be the son of an American millionaire travelling around rural Ireland), it can also be a violent one (a girl in San Francisco killed by her Russian neighbour, a servant accused of killing her infant, a man who kills his child at a racecourse) and it is also a fundamentally familiar one with people driven by love, loss, care, greed, ambition, anger and bitterness to act in ways that bring them to the attention of the forces of law and order.

To hear these stories in song, the listener is invited to travel with a host of amazing artists across time, from the early 1800s to the 1920s, and to different parts of the world - from the west coast of Ireland, through the urban centres of London and Manchester, across the Atlantic to New York, San Francisco and L.A. and south to rural Argentina, Australia and South Africa.

CD

Gatefold CD, with 32-page booklet.

Vinyl LP

Double LP, gatefold, with 20-page booklet.