There are bands that flatter the listener’s ear. Then there are bands that wake it up, pour cold water over its head, and whisper something half-mad in its sleep.
The Dark Well is one of the latter.
Enda Scahill, founder of We Banjo 3 and long recognised as one of Irish music’s great banjo innovators, teams up with Joel Andersson, the Swedish mad scientist of harmonica making, to unleash something far stranger—and more beautiful—than a live set has any right to be.
This isn’t your grandfather’s trad session. Tunes are stripped back to the bone, turned sideways, and occasionally dismantled entirely—only to be rebuilt with a kind of gleeful menace. Nothing is safe: not the rhythms, not the harmonies, and certainly not your expectations.
“We weren’t trying to be clever,” says Scahill. “We were trying to be different—and then it got out of hand.”
As if the core duo weren’t enough, the stage is scandalously crowded with virtuosic guests guests – blistering percussion drives the chaos, whilst sumptuous guitar sounds frame the groove
There is precision here, yes—but also a touch of chaos. A gleam in the eye. The feeling that something might fall apart at any second, or suddenly reveal its other face.
The Dark Well might just delight listeners who’ve been secretly waiting for trad to misbehave a little.
