After several years in the making a new compilation of Martyn's music is due to be released in March 2012. The re-mastered album 'AYE' features some of Martyn's best loved tunes plus previously unreleased tracks which will have Bennett fans everywhere waiting in eager anticipation.

Track List:

01. Ud the Doudouk (Bennett) 5.43
02. 4 Notes (Bennett) 5.51
03. Liberation (Bennett) 4.30
04. Sky Blue Remix (Gabriel) 5.19
05. Swallowtail (Bennett) 5.00
06. Harry’s In Heaven (Bennett/Low) 7.20
07. Crackcorn (Bennett) 3.23
08. Distortion Pipe (Bennett/Low) 5.58
09. Paisley Spin (Bennett/Rafferty) 5.55
10. Blackbird (Bennett/Higgins) 6.11
11. Stream (Bennett) 10.53

Additionally in conjunction with the release of 'AYE' Martyn's magnificent composition 'Mackay's Memoirs', performed at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, will be made available for digital download.

The most exciting musician you’ve never heard.

He was leftfield, radical and largely unheralded even within the roots/folk world, but this startlingly set confirms Martyn Bennett a solid goal genius. Even his relatively early track Ud The Doudouk – from 1997’s Bothy Culture – which opens this collection, is a deliciously rich, genre-busting cascade of styles with a heavy Middle Eastern flavor. A fine fiddle and bagpipe player who was effectively the first to convincingly blend tradition and techno in a glorious collision between a pure Celtic heritage and a heaving thud of the dance floor, he was on the cusp of greatness in the early 2000’s when Hodgkin’s Lymphoma intervened. He died in 2005 at 33, but this sweeping, grandstanding set – including his remix of Peter Gabriel’s Sky Blue, a sample of travelling singer Lizzie Higgins on Blackbird and an expansive version of a Gaelic psalm on Liberation – is thrillingly alive.

Colin Irwin
Mojo Magazine

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