Apollo5’s seventh album, Anam (Old Irish for ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, we learn in the booklet) brings together a range of Celtic influences – texts, songs, melodies, composers and arrangers – in a programme featuring many new commissions and arrangements, designed to move the soul. Overall, there is perhaps more soulful rapture and reflection than motion, with plenty of gorgeous melodies and sumptuous harmony, but with the most conspicuous rhythmic excitement only coming in items near the end.

My highlights included Rebecca Tavener’s striking monody O Rubor, with sighed glissandos, suggestive of gathering and dispersing energy, before/after the main chant that takes sinuous chromatic melismatic diversions on ‘fluxit’ and ‘serpentis’; Lucy Walker’s beautiful and rousing My heart, my God, is steadfast; the fresh suppleness and clarity achieved in Hubert Parry’s classic My soul, there is a country; and the two tracks (I’d have welcomed more) featuring collaborative instrumentalists, Ruth Wall (harp) in James MacMillan’s Os Mutorum, and Rita Farre (uilleann pipes) and Teena Lyle (percussion) in Lyle’s own The Eternal Rose’ But across 17 fairly short tracks, there’s lots to enjoy.

★★★★