COOL THREADS

There's something about the honey warm tinklings of the Celtic harp that sounds just right to weary fin de millennium ears, no matter how you serve it. In Hand Woven, Lorin Grean - an elfin maiden with suitably long flowing hair - serves it mostly a la light jazz and world beat. Graen also chants: a languorous New Age scat that nicely rides atop the breezy ambience of her hand-woven ensemble of bowed, blown, plucked and struck instruments. You can picture yourself soaking up this nouveau chamber music in some rustically stylish restaurant with your capuccino and sun-dried tomato pizza. And while most of the tracks could blend right into the hand-hewn woodwork, there are moments where Grean et al. make a bolder statement. In "The Grey Cat's Night Prowl" they all join in for some very colourful meowing, vocally and instrumentally. In "Cat Tales" (the final section of the title track), Grean and a couple other chantin' fools belt out staccato hollers and stretch out silky vocal threads to a big, beefy and bouncy spoons and bodhran beat.

Hey, this band can really weave.