TWO of Scottish traditional music’s well-kent faces, and founding members of RURA, have joined forces to produce new work showcasing a stripped-back approach to making music.

Time to Fly, the debut album from multi-instrumentalist David Foley and fiddler Jack Smedley, is a beautifully crafted reflection on

the duo’s musical careers to date and rediscovering a raw acoustic sound that shows the intricacy of their musicianship.

With Rura, Foley and Smedley have shared stages across the globe and spent a decade writing and collaborating on new tunes

and musical ideas, with three critically acclaimed albums to the band’s name.

During these years of musical collaboration, the pair found themselves drawn towards a more intimate sound that they couldn’t help but explore.

Their desire to play together and create music that felt more stripped back and informal was originally given voice in 2018 when they were invited to perform a one-off duo gig at Celtic Connections in Glasgow.

This performance energised the pair to continue making music for music’s sake – and Time to Fly was born. Recorded during the summer of 2019, the duo are joined on the self-penned record by long-standing friends and colleagues Jenn Butterworth (guitar), John Lowrie (drums) and James Lindsay (double bass).

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“Jack and I have collaborated together musically for over a decade. With RURA we have been lucky enough to play big festival stages across the world and it is these experiences, alongside the travel opportunities that come with all of that, that have inspired a lot of the writing on ‘Time to Fly’,” says Foley. “This album has been a great opportunity to get back to the fundamentals of our musicianship and explore the acoustic, stripped back sound we can create when it is just us and our instruments.”

Time to Fly is released on March 27