InsideOut Music release the latest album from Nad Sylvan, Spiritus Mundi, available as a special edition CD digipak (incl. 2 bonus tracks), 180g gatefold LP vinyl edition (incl. the entire album on CD) and as a digital download...

Spiritus Mundi sees Nad Sylvan take different approach from his previous "The Vampirate" trilogy (2015’s Courting the Widow, 2017’s The Bride Said No, and 2019’s The Regal Bastard).

Discussing the project, Sylvan says: "After I had finished my trilogy, I thought what should I do now? Well, a couple of years ago, a songwriter by the name of Andrew Laitres asked me if I could sing on a song he was working on. It ended up on my previous album The Regal Bastard as a bonus track called 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'. I was thinking I'd like to work with this guy again to see if we can come up with something together. So, I listened to some of his demos and I thought, why don't we develop these songs together into proper songs with great arrangements. I suggested this to him and he was in."

The album centres around the poems of Nobel Prize winning William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) and who Sylvan calls "one of the finest poets to come out of Ireland".

Spiritus Mundi marks a shift musically from Sylvan’s previous outing, focusing more on the lyrics and vocals in tandem with orchestration and timely melodies. It's an impressive, laid back album which showcases a more focused side of Sylvan's compositional style. As he used Yeats texts you could argue this gave him more time to focus on perfecting the music. As an aside, when listening to 'Sailing to Byzantium' I couldn't help but be reminded of the style of Cat Stevens.

A rich, layered album that just keeps impressing the more you plough through it.

8

Nick Smithson