The Tain - Horslips


To order this CD please phone 01947 603833 (international +44 1947 603833)
From 9am - 9pm GMT. open 7 days a week.
Before ordering please view our Order Page.


Price £12.99 + post and packaging to buy from this website,
normal retail  price £14.99.

THE TAIN.

Within a year of the completion of their debut album, the band released a follow-up, The Tain.

The seeds of an idea had been sown years earlier when an embryonic band line-up had attempted to write a score for a stage adaptation of the saga which was due to be staged at the Abbey Theatre. The production was never finalised. Nor was the music. But the project had proved intriguing enough for the band to pursue it further.

Dearg Doom was recorded first, for release as a single in Ireland. The location was Richard Branson's recently opened resedential studio The Manor, outside Oxford. The High Reel was recorded as a single B-side in an intoxicated state after dinner one evening. It may be possible to hear someone (respect Maggie) fall into a set of tubular bells which were to prove useful for a member of the Manor crew, M.Oldfield.

The backing tracks for the album were subsequently recorded in the slightly more sober surroundings of Escape Studios in Kent. (How does Jeff Beck fit into this episode, Johnny?)

Overdubs and mixing took place in the hazy surroundings of the Manor Studios.

In 1902, W.B. Yeats noted in his preface to Lady Gregory's Cuchulainn of Muirthemne, "If we will but tell these stories to our children the Land will begin again to be a Holy Land as it was before men gave their hearts to Greece and Rome and Judea."