Saor have released The Awakening MMXXVI, a song first heard on Aura in 2014 and now recorded again. It is the second piece of Caledonia, out on 6 November through Season of Mist.
The album is five old songs, from Roots, Aura and Guardians, re-recorded from nothing. Andy Marshall's argument against the obvious objection is that the arrangements changed by themselves across a decade of playing them, and that what he can do in a studio now is not what he could do then, so the versions on the records are not the versions that exist.
He calls it finishing something rather than looking back at it. On a project that has always been one man's, with the folk instruments and the production both carried by him, that distinction is not rhetorical: the first versions were made with what he had.
The song reaches the Gaelic word eirich, rise, and goes from there to the inner flame and the paths laid by the people before. Which is where this band always ends up, and the reason the re-recordings are not a cash exercise: the lyric was already about continuing something.