Listeners unfamiliar with bagpipes (specifically the Scottish smallpipes) who hit play on Brìghde Chaimbeul’s last record, 2023’s Carry Them with Us, immediately got a strong dose of the instrument: a bright, blaring drone held for around 25 seconds before Chaimbeul and eventually Colin Stetson on saxophone introduced notes, melody, variation. One way to sum up what’s different about the new Sunwise is that we again begin with a drone, a deeper and darker one, but here it’s held for nearly six minutes. It’s almost two-thirds of “Dùsgadh/Waking” and even when Chaimbeul starts layering plaintive calls over it, that drone thrums away powerfully in the background. The effect is stunning, in a couple of senses of the term.
It also plays into, thematically, what she’s doing here. The title of Sunwise refers to a traditional Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) practice in Scotland, and on its first half Chaimbeul’s playing draws on stories and folklore around the setting in of winter and the desolate stretch that follows. It consists of just two lengthy tracks (with "A' Chailleach” seeing the single return of Stetson this time around), both written by Chaimbeul and among her most striking work yet. After a brief interlude of a crackling fireplace, the second half has a variety of shorter, livelier pieces all adapted from traditional tunes (except “Duan,” with her father Aonghas Phàdraig Chaimbeul reciting a rhyme associated with the ritual that gives the album its title). After playing live by herself so much in the past few years, Chaimbeul also recorded mostly on her own (others adding parts later, if at all) with the exception of the spritely “Sguabag/The Sweeper,” capturing her and three other pipers together.
After the stark, almost severe power of the first half, which evokes winter even without knowing any backstory (yes, even in the midst of our current heat dome), the relative lightness of touch on those shorter pieces doesn’t read as rejecting or denying the season so much as showing how people get through it. Even more so than on the excellent Carry Them with Us there’s a powerfully ceremonial feeling to this set of songs, aided by the even more minimal instrumental lineup and that frosty, imposing first side. Of course, just as the seasons inevitably change, Sunwise thaws as it goes on, until it ends with the minute-long “The Rain Is Wine & The Stones Are Cheese,” a duet with her and her brother Eòsaph singing in a traditional style used to vocalize the sound of the bagpipes. It’s used “to mark the longest and therefore darkest night of the year” and sends this album off just as the corner has been turned; winter has set in, been endured, and now the days will slowly get longer.
A Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise punk duo. A new alloy that deconstructs both traditional and futurist knowledge.
This thrilling ensemble is releasing their self-titled debut album hot on the heels of their acclaimed 4-song EP Dabalomuni (January 2022), that The Wire called “freaked, juddering electronic punk.”
A mysterious matrix that echoes disparate (but strangely compatible) sonic strands: deep griot traditions, Fugazi, Can, 70s era Zappa, Black Midi, the full throttle rush of Nyege Nyege Tapes.
tak:til is a new sub-label of Glitterbeat Records and they are releasing Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock in Europe, including the first release on CD. April 7, 2017. Next European dates to be announced soon...
Pulled By Magnets — Rose Golden Doorways (Glitterbeat)
Photo by Krisztian Sipos
Drummer Seb Rochford, a co-founder of Sons Of Kemet and leader of the now defunct Polar Bear, returns from a hiatus with saxophonist Pete Wareham and bassist Neil Charles as Pulled By Magnets on their debut album, a journey into a crucible that encompasses Jazz, ambient noise, classical Indian music and the grinding tropes of industrial metal. Recorded in a London church as a series of live takes with some electronic treatment, Rose Golden Doorways is a behemoth of otherworldly sound that alternatively stomps and tiptoes. Anchored by Rochford’s restless drums and Charles’ exploratory bass, Wareham’s transcendent saxophone seems to float disembodied, here a wraith, there a banshee as the trio harness a primal energy that is at once disquieting and transportive.
Opening track “Nowhere Nothing” begins with a fearsome buzz like some machine clearing space, erasing the now for new life which stumbles in on a single drum and a wounded sax motif that builds as Rochford explores the rest of his kit and a bass rumbles. An uneasy truce between man and eternity seems possible as the track fades. The sense of space deepens throughout the album as the trio carves out provisional footholds in the expanse. “Breath That Sparks” faces the emptiness with a barely discernible bass pulse and a wash of chimes. Charles anchors “Those Amongst Us” with a simple bowed motif, as Rochford attacks his instrument with a deceptively light touch and Wareham blows thoughtful gusts. The power resides not in volume or bombast but in the stubborn humanness of the creative act. The interplay sounds at once deeply personal and wonderfully communal, a focus of concentration and exploration that defies categorization as if one lapse would negate the entire exercise.
Rose Golden Doorways is an astonishing experience, uncompromising in its willingness to map extremes of ethereal quiet and the physicality of sound, played without fear by musicians drilling deep into an ugly core to extract beauty and return to share their findings with those who would care to listen. Hopefully those who would will and persuade others to join, Pulled By Magnets well worth that investment.
