#sunwise

[codcod-32]

recent episode spoilers below (our planets go rogue pt.2)

he's just like the sun!

[dustedmagazine]

Brìghde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (Glitterbeat/tak:til)

Photo by Johnny Ashworth

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.

Ian Mathers

[ask-four-inept-guardponies]

Oh look, another decade-old ask.

[omg-snakes]

[catchmewiddershins]

In the UK it’s legal to get married at 16 with parental consent and I’ve been 16 for a while so

Sugawara

Your move

[butters-the-alicorn]

Sunwise didn’t visit that wing of the castle so much after that. 

Moving on!

[ask-four-inept-guardponies]

Arrowhead has a rather low pinion of her husband’s preening abilities.

[ask-four-inept-guardponies]

You can’t preen ye husband, forsooth!