''Universal Hall'' is the eighth studio album by

the Waterboys The Waterboys are a rock band formed in 1983 by Scottish musician and songwriter Mike Scott (Scottish musician), Mike Scott. The band's membership, past and present, has been composed mainly of musicians from Britain and Ireland, with Scott re ...

, released in 2003. It is named after the theatre and performance hall at the

Findhorn Foundation The Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain.''The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and O ...

, which is pictured on the album cover. The album shows much more influence from

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

than its predecessor, '' A Rock in the Weary Land''. It is the first Waterboys album to feature

Steve Wickham Steve Wickham is an Irish musician. Originally from Ballyfermot, Dublin, but calling Sligo home, Wickham was a founding member of In Tua Nua (left in 1985 replaced by Aingeala de Burca) and played violin on the classic U2 song " Sunday Blo ...

since '' Room to Roam'', and therefore the first Waterboys album with all three core members of the post-reunion band. Mike Scott describes the album as a "record containing one Irish reel and eleven spiritual songs that articulate - to the best of my ability - the vision that drives, challenges, sustains and transforms me". The cover was designed by art director Steve Manson. James Christopher Monger, writing for

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

, describes "Every Breath Is Yours" as "simplified", and "

Nick Drake Nicholas Rodney Drake (19 June 1948 – 25 November 1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician. An accomplished acoustic guitarist, Drake signed to Island Records at the age of twenty while still a student at the University of Cambridg ...

-cloned". Scott thanks Liebe Pugh for the song. "Seek the Light" is unique amongst Waterboys recordings for borrowing heavily from contemporary

dance music Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance musi ...

, specifically

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mos ...

. It includes part of the song "Etheric Currents" from the album ''Cosmic Breath'', by May East and Craig Gibsone, both of whom also appear on "Seek the Light". East plays an instrument, the sandawa, which the album's recording notes claims "reproduces the frequency of the speed of light". "The Dance at the Crossroads" is the "one Irish reel" mentioned by Scott. It is a short instrumental written by Wickham, who performs the song on

fiddle A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin or a bass. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Althou ...

. Scott plays both tambron and rotosphere, while Naiff plays

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

Track listing

Tracks written by Mike Scott, except as noted.

Personnel

* Mike Scott – vocals (all tracks but 10), guitar (tracks 1, 3–6, 9, 12), bass (track 1, 3, 5, 7, 9), piano (track 1–4, 8, 9), loops (track 1, 3, 5), acoustic guitar (track 2) harmonium (track 3, 9), electric piano (track 5, 12), organ (track 6, 11), keyboards, synthesizer (track 7, 9, 12), hand drum, tambourine (track 9, 10), 12-string guitar, crystal guitar (track 11) *

– fiddle (track 1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 12), orchestra (track 1, 12), bass (track 7) *Scott Gamble – djembe, djoon djoon (track 1), hand drum (track 4) *Chris Madden – loops (track 1, 3), tambourine (track 3) * Richard Naiff – flute (track 5, 10), piano (track 6, 10, 12) *Finlay Grant – drums (track 5) *Craig Gibsone – didjeridoo (track 7) * May East – sandawa (track 7)

Ballet music

In 2007 British choreographer Christopher Bruce created a new work for the ballettmainz of the German Staatstheater Mainz using six songs from this album. The ballet premiered on 8 November 2007 in

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

. Order of the songs: # I've Lived Here Before # Always Dancing, Never Getting Tired # Peace of Iona # Seek the Light # The Christ in You # The Dance at the Crossroads

Charts

Notes

# # # #

External links

Lyrics at the official Waterboys website

Official forum
Chord requests are often fulfilled at "Musician's Corner" {{Authority control The Waterboys albums 2003 albums Findhorn community