I understand now that song collecting should be purely archival and I understand the emotions that run through this debate, especially as it involves the memories of the deceased. But I do feel these field recordings should be heard as much as possible and not remain as museum pieces... another motivation behind this was really as a reaction to hearing glossy over produced 'folk' artist interpretations of songs (just listened to the afore mentioned Mary Delaney song...), this was as Ive said non commercial.

I can also see the effect that those Peter Kennedy experiments had (I didn't know about this until a few months back - and have never heard them). I am admitting that I was wrong and naïve to think that people might be interested in hearing the songs in a new context - and of course I should have contacted Music Traditions, the individual recordists, and most importantly of all the relatives of the singers. As I said, I was in touch with someone from Topic who basically spoke for all the Topic released material regardless of the individual recordists and never suggested I contact you. This project only started as a private expression of my enjoyment of the singing and the sheer emotional joy and sadness in these songs. They weren't randomly selected. And the name has nothing to do with 'Around The Hills of Clare', but as someone mentioned earlier a reversal of over the hills and far away - which I felt expressed the idea of wanting to bring hidden traditions nearby.

The soundcloud page (now)doesn't represent the music I made for this project, that is another project (involving no samples - I play all the instruments). There is one clip left of UHandN(someone filmed me, and posted it - without my permission, by the way)on you tube, which hopefully might stand as a better played and more sensitive example of my 'hommage' to the singers. I would be as uncomfortable as any of you at the idea of an 'electronica' style dance take on traditional singing.

Anyway,I've deleted everything I can. I'm going to start working on my banjo skills a bit more, as I didn't realise they were that awful.

A donation will be on its way.

Sam