A sweltering July evening at the wrong end of London's Ladbroke Grove and tempers are frayed. But above the exhaust fumes of the evening rush hour, life-affirming volleys of Irish traditional music ricochet through the traffic's throb. Across a steep, red-painted bridge that spans the Regent's Park canal linking the listed white stucco mansion on the north side with a brick and glass warehouse conversion on the south, a constant stream of people - all young or would-be young - move toward the music.
Welcome to the heart of the Virgin empire, that tonight beats to the rhythms of Altan, introduced by A & R man Declan Colgan, as "one of the best bands in the world". And as the setting sun makes a halo around Ciaran Curran's head and Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh's gossamer dress catches the dying light like a cobweb, fiddles, accordion, bazouki and barrel drum converge in a jig of contrapuntal perfection.
Tonight's beer and barbecue showcase is to launch Altan's new album Runaway Sunday, released on July 28th. For a while the canal-side complex was a club and restaurant run by Virgin called The Portobello Dock. Now the buildings have been taken back into the family fold: the restaurant is the staff canteen. A mile further east along the public towpath the canal broadens into Little Venice, where Richard Branson's original office, a narrow boat named Duende, is still moored. Branson has never strayed far from his original stamping ground: individual offices are dotted around W10 and W11; books, videos, films, records, exports, accounts - each sector retains its own identity, its own location. His first record shop was in Notting Hill Gate. He still lives in Holland Park.
For although Virgin is big, it has never lost sight of individual strengths. It's this philosophy that persuaded Altan to sign with them 18 months ago. When their contract with Green Linnet, the small American label they had been with for the best part of a decade was up, explains Ciaran Curran, the interest was enormous.
"Naturally we went shopping around. But in the end we decided to go for Virgin. They were a major label and yet not too big. They understood more what the music was about and gave us what would be termed artistic freedom. They said, `we'll give you this, we'll give you that, but at the end of the day when you go into the studio you can do what you want'. And we'd all heard stories of other bands, not necessarily Irish traditional bands, where things had gone wrong; where the big name record company hadn't got what they wanted from an album. `It hasn't done this, it hasn't done that, we can't get a single out of it, it's not radio friendly.' Things like that. Whereas Virgin were interested in what we were doing and gave us the space to develop."
"What Virgin as a label has always been able to do is to sign the best in any genre," explains Declan Colgan, who signed Altan. "Because the best will always go that bit further. It transcends genre and is more likely to get across to a broad constituency of people and become part of the mainstream.
"It happens in classical, it happens in jazz, it happens in any genre of music when you're talking about the best. And Altan are the best, in terms of unison playing. When I first saw them live, I got the same sense of emotion and power and excitement as I did when I first saw The Clash when I was 17 or seeing the Bothy Band. The energy in music is all the same; it doesn't matter what sort of music it is if it has that power. In terms of Irish traditional music, the unison playing was the most powerful I'd seen since the Bothy Band. And what was so special about them was that they had these great soloists who, when they came together, just powered it out as a band."
Like any other relationship, explains Colgan, the chemistry between label and band is crucial to its success. "Altan saw what Virgin had done with other genre music and saw it wasn't being sidelined. Nor were we going to disregard the music and say well, if you add a couple of synthesisers and a drum beat we can have a hit in the dance charts. We sign a band for what they are, not for some weird idea about what we'd like them to be."
NOT that Virgin intends to preserve Altan in aspic. There are elements on the new album that are new. "A band has to develop and gradually move forward," Colgan explains. "The thing that's been special about Irish traditional music in the last 20 or 30 years is that it has evolved. There is a tendency for music from other cultures in the folk music arena to be revered as if it's entombed or encased. So it becomes about this mythical past that nobody can actively engage with anyway. The good thing about Irish music is that it continues to evolve and that makes it relevant to a new audience all the time. Music is always being embellished.
"The important thing is that the embellishments are secondary to the core traditional music so you're not doing anything to alienate the core audience or the critics. If you have something that's really special and unique it will always come through. There will always be attempts to synthesise." And Declan Colgan has no problem with that. Take Riverdance. "Musically Bill Whelan's an extremely clever musician, he's a good composer and he's surrounded himself with some of the best musicians." In doing so, Colgan believes, he has broadened the audience. "There will always be a percentage who'll say, let's trace it back, and a percentage of them will discover Altan." If proof were needed, last Sunday's concert at the Royal Festival Hall, London's premier orchestral venue, played to a packed house, he says. "And most of the voices I heard were English." And tonight when the set ends, London's hippest and coolest call out for more.
For Altan the change of labels has already proved its worth, believes Ciaran Curran. Their first album with Virgin, Blackwater, recorded last year, has just gone platinum in Ireland. "Altan's tours are no longer dependent on festivals. With Virgin being a major label they have a presence in every country in the world. That has to be an advantage. Recently we did a tour of Japan - our first time there. It's nice to tour when you have a back-up when you're there, and when you're gone they can follow through with record sales. Because at the end of the day you can have all the notes musically in the world but the bottom line is it's the money notes that count."