Malin Lewis – Halocline: Album Review

By Seuras Og on 30th April 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

Ear bogglingly good piper with vibrantly evocative debut. Watch this space, watch this name!

Release Date: 3rd May 2024

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

Lewis is queer, trans and identifies as they/them, and that is likely the bit most press will latch upon. I mention it merely so as to move on and concentrate on the music, which brims over with skill, passion and melody. This Highlander, from the Rough Bounds of Moidart, has issued perhaps the most vibrant debut instrumental performance of this or any year. And, perhaps more astonishing than any mentions of identity, is the fact that the pipes played, Scottish smallpipes, are not only home made, but made with a 3D printer, something my addled brain can’t quite get a handle on. So yes, this is a bagpipes album, but not quite like any other, so pin back yer lugs.

The smallpipes are an instrument with a glorious throaty gurgle, midway between the mighty Highland war pipes and the Northumbrian bellows driven version. These, like the latter, are bellows driven and are said to be less strident than their lung driven big brother, and I guess they are. The ones used here are the first wooden set of the Donald Lindsay two octave 3D prototype, the pair working on them together. They sound gorgeous, a warm hot toddy of an Island malt whisky, Talisker, I would think, and heather honey.

And what is a Halocline? A halocline is the identifiable edge between conjoining sea and fresh water currents. With a childhood home on Eilean Shona, a tidal island in Loch Moidart, Lewis had ample opportunity to witness this, whilst swimming in the Skye estuary. It is a metaphor, they suggest, for where they fit into the tide of humankind. Time to immerse, then.

Hiraeth is a Welsh word, Brittonic Celtic, meaning what a Scots Gaelic speaker, Goidelic Celtic, might call Cianalas, or, broadly, homesickness. (Forgive the chalk talk, I just love the full historical of the Celtic nations and of Gaeldom.) Anyhoo, the tune starts with a set of drone notes, before embarking into a slow melancholic air, on pipes alone. Already you imagine the mists rolling in, as the notes bend and blur. Some picked strings enter, on electric guitar, followed by breathy sax, to pierce the soundscape with a gentle touch, along with delicate pulses of something electronic. A first unidentifiable sound becomes that of a female voice, ululating as a quiet storm. I’ve never been there, but already I am yearning for the island.

Trans picks up the pace, a kantele plucking apace, with Lewis bubbling out a stream of notes over the background of bass and percussion. I think the saxophone is there too, matching the pipe trajectory perfectly. The saxophone breaks free, on a keyboard bed, ahead the main theme returning, all with a sense of triumph. There’s fiddle in there somewhere, too. Cycle Lane offers up a shimmery mix of sounds, before what sounds like wooden flute, but is pobably low whistle, leads the way forward. An enchanting and circular tune that abruptly picks up speed, the rhythm that of the pumping pedals of a bike. The voice is back, keening along and the soundwash is divine.

Next up is Freshwater, a brief interlude, all of forty odd seconds, the first of two, studio constructs drawn from fragments of the opener, Hiraeth. These are the work of Andy Bell, who is the producer, as he is for most of Hudson Records’ generally exemplary product, his name always a guarantor, beyond even the progeny of the music. It leads into Luna’s, which sounds appropriately nocturnal, if in the glow of a filling moon. Saxophone brays lowly, with a repeating keyboard patter, before Malin pipes up with a burbling excursion around the notes available. A more conventional drum beat starts up, the melody now in unison orchestration. As a marker of quite how well it is all mixed together, it is often difficult to say who is playing what and when. Suffice it to say that the saxophone comes from Matthew Herd and percussion from Stuart Brown, with Cammy Maxwell providing the double bass. The kantele and voice is Maija Kauhanen. I also note that the fiddle is also the work of Lewis, abetted on a couple of tracks by Sally Simpson.

A Clearing is possibly the most overtly Highland sounding track, a slow pipe and drone air that floats on the wind, as synths add elemental textures, the synthesiser also credited to Maxwell. Now I really do feel homesick, a genetic magnet of muscle memory calling me north. A gradual build seeps in, a second melody, in near echo, acting as a rudder, fighting with the siren’s call. The jaunty Tune 51 shatters that moment, if pleasingly, seemingly the first tune written by Lewis, the mood now of joy rather than of longing. The sax segues in again, toward the end, the combination of instruments proving, think Davy Spillane’s uillean pipes and Keith Donald’s sax in Moving Hearts, a winning one, and most appealing.

The Old Inn floats in on plucked strings, kantele and bouzoukis, and cooing whistles, pipes joining in a low burr, a celebration of where Lewis first honed their craft, in sessions. Uncertain if it is the Old Inn in Gairloch or Carbost, Skye, but certainly the latter has a celebrated pub music sessions history, so my money’s there. Saltwater, the second interlude is next, at just under a minute of condensed sounds. Elisions is thus enabled to offer a fresh start, coming on all over like East Wind, the Balkan project by Andy Irvine and, that man again, Davy Spillane. This compass is true as the track contains a pair of kopanitsas, bulgarian folk dances, from which Lewis extends and extemporises. Strummed acoustic is the scaffolding, this coming, as does the bouzouki elsewhere, from Luc McNally. He also is credited with electric guitar, thus confirming it as being present on the opener. With a swift gear change midway, the tempo ups and it makes for a bonny piece.

The only track which is not from Lewis (or any Bulgar tradition) is the last, You Are Not Alone. This is a tune written by Marek Talts, a jazz guitarist from Estonia. A distorting drone beckons in the pipes, sounding here as warm as anywhere on this disc. As it lurches forward, other instruments join, the distort maintaining an episodic presence, a slow and eerie end to this substantively satisfying disc. If a slightly odd and questioning way to end the set, maybe it was sequenced so as to leave a desire to hear more. If so, it worked. And I do. And I am sure it won’t, either, be the last from Lewis Malin, the feeling that we have here another pipe prodigy, another Brìghde Chaimbeul, or Ross Ainslie.

(For further background into Lewis, you could do no worse than listen to the episode of Matthew Bannisters’s Folk On Foot series, dedicated to Lewis and recorded on the island of Eilean Shona.)

Catch a bit of Malin here, Hiraeth: