Album Review

Volume Two, by Will McNicol with Innotet (acoustic guitar with string quartet)

Jesse Paliotto

Oct 11, 2024 • 1 min read

Acoustic guitar with string quartet is an instrumentation that multi award-winning guitarist and composer, Will McNicol, has dreamed of exploring for years. Through this collaboration with Glasgow-based fiddle player and arranger Innes Watson, those dreams have become a reality.

Innotet is the string quartet formed specially for this project, and is comprised of some of the finest Scottish musicians in their respective fields:

Violin I: Seonaid Aitken

Violin II: Innes Watson

Viola: Patsy Reid

Cello: Alice Allen

This second album, Volume Two, comprises of 12 tracks, each originating as solo guitar compositions Will wrote over the course of five years. Innes and Will collaborated on the string arrangements over a course of months before hitting the studio (GloWorm Studios in Glasgow) in December 2023 to record the album.

They teamed up with recording and mixing engineer, Andrea Gobbi and set about creating the best possible record they could, buoyed by their experiences with Volume One. A central concept was the idea of the guitar becoming part of the ensemble, not simply using strings to accompany solo guitar pieces.

Vinyl specialists and record label, Vertere, were on board from the beginning which allowed a focus on creating the highest-possible quality vinyl record as an end result. Part of that process included half-speed mastering courtesy of world-renowned mastering engineer, Miles Showell.