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.
“So damn good it descends on the surface of these eardrums like a meteor from Krypton. My first hearing of this one convinced me that it was a record that couldn’t be heard either often or loud enough … Their music – drawn from traditional Arabic, Indian and Mississippi influences, is intensely hypnotic and ecstatically exciting … If you’ve been yearning to hear something undeniably ancient yet thrillingly new, played by people as if their lives depended on it, then step right up.”
- Steve Hunt in fRoots
First of all, for any interested non-Gaelic speakers, the young Scottish piper’s name is (per her own site) pronounced “Bree-chu CHaym-bul.” And secondly, while the music found on this, her third album, sounds like what most would identify as bagpipes, it’s… well it is and it isn’t. To the extent that bagpipes are known to the wider world it’s something like the great Highland bagpipe (musician blowing into a reed, pipes extending over shoulder). Chaimbeul can certainly play that too, but she specializes more in the Scottish smallpipes, a bellow-driven instrument of more recent vintage (the 80s!) albeit from a lineage going back hundreds of years. The details are worth noting up front, because the music on Carry Them With Us is so viscerally enchanting it might be hard to keep track of them once you’re mid-listen.
Both varieties of bagpipe share some seemingly contradictory qualities. Drone instruments that (due to the various chanters used and other aspects of their design) can handle complex, fast-moving melodies; intensely analogue devices that, due to their precision and lack of sonic decay, can feel almost electronic in nature. Capable of simultaneously evoking melancholy and spritely joy, one on its own, played well, can fill a whole room with sound almost to the point of oppression. Unsurprisingly for a musician who’s been winning awards since she was a teen, Chaimbeul is an exceptional player of the smallpipes and from the opening blast of “Pililiù: The Call of the Redshank” these 35 minutes practically put on a clinic on why any listener might want to get to know them.
Not that Chaimbeul is strictly solo; after Canadian saxophone dynamo Colin Stetson reached out to her about a documentary soundtrack, the two of them wound of working together on six of the nine tracks here. If you’ve never previously considered the way sax and bagpipe might sound like each other, or take on similar roles, or complement each other, their completely natural fit here might take you aback. Stetson fans are well aware of the head of steam he can build up, but Chaimbeul’s no slouch either; a track like “Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom: I Am Disposed of Mirth” already feels delirious before you notice Stetson’s whirling flutters unspooling in the background. Even when their roles diverge more, like the impossible to miss saxophone tessellations towards the end of “’S Mi Gabhail an Rathaid: I Take the Road,” they feel like kindred spirits.
The most notable element aside from Chaimbeul’s pipes and Stetson’s sax is her voice, singing in Gaelic. It only shows up a few times but it’s an arresting presence whenever it does. Maybe if you speak the language it turns out she’s singing about something more mundane, but based on the song titles here and the incantatory, almost vatic feeling those passages bring to the rest of the music it’s hard not to feel like there’s something of deep significance being passed on. Like the rest of Carry Them With Us, it's intensely striking.
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...
How confident are you in identifying international instruments? Here’s a test: score ten points for each accurate answer. Daf, ocarina, mizmar, balafon, ribab, guembri, tank drum, balafon, tampura brač, acoustic resonator. We write about music daily, and still had to Google most of these. Not only does Širom scour the land looking for unique instruments, the trio makes their own. As a…
Jon Hassell/Farafina — Flash of the Spirit (tak:til/Glitterbeat)
Flash of the Spirit by Jon Hassell / Farafina
Think long enough about Jon Hassell’s music and a paradox emerges. Hassell is an iconic trumpet player; he’s recorded albums for ECM and carved out a peculiar space for his “fourth world” imagery — effectively soundtracking a surreal and fictional part of the globe while nodding in the direction of numerous musical traditions.
But Hassell is also a prime collaborator: he might be best-known for Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, his 1980 album with Brian Eno, but it’s far from alone in his discography. He’s also worked with Davids Sylvian and Toop; now, via Glitterbeat’s tak:til imprint, his 1987 collaboration with the Burkina Faso-based group Farafina is back in print.
Though to label Flash of the Spirit as simply a collaboration between Hassell and Farafina might be somewhat misleading. This is one where reading the liner notes can be enlightening: they explain that Daniel Lanois recorded the group in 1987; after that, Brian Eno “carved and shaped the remaining mixes.” Hassell himself is credited with “the creation and fitting together of electronic musical superstructure with pre-existing Farafina compositions.”
All of that is to say that, while the prospect of Hassell sitting in with Farafina for a set could be inviting enough, that’s not what’s going on with this album. There’s a copious amount of musical talent on display here, but it’s also difficult to suss out precisely who did what — which, considering the notion of the studio as an instrument unto itself, is far from a bad thing.
The resulting album is one that can be propulsive, but is largely concerned with creating thoroughly immersive sonic spaces. “Kaboo [Play]” abounds with vocal give-and-take and subtly played propulsive; those elements are, in turn, surrounded by a shimmering keyboard sound. It’s an ethos that doesn’t sound pinned to a specific time or place, which accounts for much of its charm and power.
While Hassell’s name is billed first, this is the sort of collaboration in which both parties can share the spotlight. Farafina drummer Paco Yé takes the spotlight on “Air Afrique [Wind],” which is based around one of his compositions. Percussion is also at the center of the song, even as synthetic melodies and chanted lyrics surround it.
Still, Hassell is a tremendously skilled player, and on songs such as “(Like) Warriors Everywhere [Courage],” his resonant tone doubles back on itself. Between this and sheets of percussion, the effect is all-encompassing. It’s one of many places on Flash where the musicians and producers seem entirely in sync, pushing forward to create something new, a glimpse of the jazz standards of an alternate Earth.
Raül Fernandez Miró is a Spanish musician and producer behind the curtains of the new flamenco movement, his most notable contributions being Granada, his duo album with Sílvia Pérez Cruz, and Rosalía Vila’s Los Ángeles. The latter’s most recent album, El Mal Querer, broke through this past year and although Raul had no hand in its production, like with most projects that sprout from this movement, he was just a degree away.
La Otra Mitad comes 15 years after his first solo release as Refree. With each release in his discography under this guise, you can hear certain production cues unspool, Miró choosing to leave parts undressed and exposed, and continually finding subtle ways to let his guard down. La Otra Mitad, or “The Other Half”, collects Raül’s two Jai Alai volumes from 2017, released as two 10-inch records. Named after the fast-paced Spanish ball game with a name translating to “merry festival”, the volumes tap on Miró’s range of styles, and at times offers a distillation of his varied voices.
The first volume is guitar-centric, mostly solo pieces named after the guitar it was played on and the date recorded. These sparse recordings are short Flamenco expressions, maybe more accurately falsetas, preserved to tape within close proximity to their inception, like plucked, young white tea leaves. The majority of the pieces on the second volume were created as the soundtrack for Isaki Lacuesta’s Entre dos aguas. Fusing languid field recordings with a vocal focus (ones distinctly recorded without the purpose of being documented for the music) with guitar work reminiscent of Vini Reilly, Miró handles each track with lightly psychedelic production touches. He cites Gavin Bryars’ “Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet” as “possessing” the pieces on volume two; Bryars’ piece, which loops a tattered recording of a homeless man singing an old English hymn in a shifty meter and slowly brings in a complementing solemn string accompaniment, is cryptic and exponentially hypnotizing. Although much shorter than Bryars’ work, the pieces here have a similar brooding but tantalizing weight.
Tak:til, Glitterbeat’s sub-label, split the volumes up rather than placing them one after the other. The resequencing of the wide-ranging, vaguely ethnographic material works in the best interest of both. The vocality and space created by the nimble guitar melodies and the melismatic, dislocated recordings contrast with sobering effect.
