So much of modern life is instant. You look at something online and within microseconds you are being served up dozens of adds for similar items. Everything is connected and yet we so often feel disconnected as things blur around us. So, when an artist creates something that slows the world and allows you to feel rooted for a while it is enchanting, and Brìghde Chaimbeul’s new album Sunwise is such a project. Chaimbeul is an award-winning Scottish small pipes player who not only utilises “tradition, folklore and mystery“ but also takes us into an experimental soundscape that allows the pipes to drift into myriad sonic worlds.
“This record follows the embrace of wintertime: the closing in of darkness, the cold, the pull to turn inward. But also the customs of the season and gathering for a ceilidh; songs and stories told round the fire: where the boundaries between reality and imagination begin to blur.”
The opening drone of ‘Dùsgadh/Waking’ works as a way of tuning us into the album. Its elongated notes stretch time, slowly building like a zen overture that draws us into the album’s world. It’s like a tuning fork making sure we are aligned with the rest of the album. It’s only at the 5-minute mark that a soulful tune appears, and after so long on one undulating note it is like the sun breaking through the clouds. This is followed by the rotational ‘A’ Chailleach’ a song about Chailleach Bheurr, “one of the last giants that lived in the Highlands and who brings in the winter: controls the bad weather, frost and biting winds.” As with the opening track it isn’t until the halfway mark that we hear Chaimbeul’s voice for the first time and it is as pure as it is exquisite. It also melds the pipes with saxophone played by Colin Stetson so well it’s hard to tell where one instrument starts and the other ends.
After the crackle of the interlude ‘kindle the fire’, we start to speed up with the bounce of ‘She Went Astray’ a song which dates back to 1934 and which Chaimbeul found from Miss Peigi MacRae of North Glendale. The pipes are constantly pulsing underneath the lyrics which perfectly capture the movement of the dance. ‘Bog an Lochan’ has the kind of fast pipe playing that dazzles as you try and imagine how the fingers could move so fast. It is inspired by wild, stormy nights when fairies take away humans who are “helpless or unguarded or unwary”.
‘Sguabag / The Sweeper’ is a kaleidoscope of overlapping pipes with Chaimbeul joined by John Mcsherry, Francis Mcllduff, and Jamie Murphy on uilleann pipes. It’s a giddy celebration of the frenetic pace they can set, and you can imagine that the Pied Piper would have lured even more people away from Hamelin playing these instead (this is a traditional jig called ‘The Yellow Wattle’). ‘Duan’ brings back the crackle of the fire and a clarion call for winter from the pipes. It ends with Brìghde Chaimbeul’s father Aonghas Phadraig Caimbeul reciting a Hogmanay (‘Oidhche Challainn’ in Gaelic) rhyme. We close on the ‘The Rain Is Wine And The Stones Are Cheese’ a short and sweetly tumbling mix of pipes leaping and vaulting along with the vocals. It is talking about “Feill Fionnain nam fteadh” – “St Finan’s night of festivities” – the longest and therefore darkest night in the year was a night to gather in one house to enjoy a ceilidh. It was said on this night ‘the rain is wine and the stones are cheese’.”
Sunwise has the traditional and the modern coexist in joyful harmony, and despite it being released in the summer months you still get a shiver from that “embrace of wintertime”, but the instruments and vocals bring a timeless energy along with the warmth of the fire and the joy of company.
Released on the Glitterbeat imprint label tak:til
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Review by Paul F Cook
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