File under experimental, arcane and idiosyncratic, this is piping for posterity from Brìghde Chaimbeul.

Release Date : 27th June 2025

Label : tak.til./Glitterbeat

Format : CD / Vinyl / Digital

Brave and Deliberate

It takes a brave performer to open a record with a blast of prolonged small pipe drone. Any suggestion that it is the small pipes, full stop, that are the brave decision, well, you’d be way out of touch there, I’m afraid, and way out of line. They, and drones, are huge these days. You know that. But, yes, that is exactly what you get from Ms. Chaimbeul, introducing her latest recording in exactly that way, a single sustained note, for a full 5 minutes and 49 seconds. Count it. Or, more to the point, time it on your watch, without any music. It’s a long time, and it’s one hell of a drone, an imperial drone, that puts all others in the shade.

Of course, drones are far from a single note, even if based around being one. That is the purpose of those, usually, three otherwise seemingly surplus pipes, emitting their own own constant skirl, as the player “plays” the chanter. Anyhoo, for nearly six of the tracks nine minutes, these drone pipes add their inescapable fixed note resonance to a sustained single note on the chanter, if indeed the chanter had any involvement at all. However, the very nature of the instrument introduces constant miniscule variations in pitch. So, even if there isn’t a tune, per se, within it, the human brain is swiftly able to find one, in much the same way that, in an MRI scanner, it can find a tune from the noisy din. (Or is that just me?)

The Ghost of Terry Riley

Chaimbeul is a bit of a star, somehow, and this Skye born, native Gaelic speaker has been playing the pipes since she was seven, which was in 2005. And, it’s Breecha, btw, not Bridie. A rising star, she has twice won Radio 2 Folk awards, in 2016 and 2019, respectively, as Young Folk Artist for the former and the prestigious Horizon award for the latter. We here at ATB have followed her career with interest, solo and with artists as diverse as Ross Ainslie and Colin Stetson. This is her 4th release, and furthers the continuation of her footprint, stamping her way far beyond the traditional musics she made first her name in.

So, back to that drone, which, job done, unwinds into a slow air. With the drones retaining their almost religious constancy, just a few notes, up and down, on the chanter, make for the waking this second part of the track is named after. The first part is titled, Dùsgadh, or Wake Up! I think it astonishing, and am, if still blinking. It is then the ghost of Terry Riley that Chaimbeul manages to conjure up, with A’ Chailleach coming on like a slowed down Rainbow In Curved Air. Repetitive minimalism can be an acquired taste, but I find it transports me to a place of meditation, and it does here.

the full magic carpet

With the variations subtle and slow to appear, it is the full magic carpet. When they do come, it is a helter pelter tumble, as layers gradually build. Suddenly, from nowhere, a voice peals up, in Gaelic song, becoming then multitracked into a waulking choir of tweedstresses. This is Chaimbeul, revealing a pure and unaffected soprano. All the more astonishing considering any witness of her live performance might believe she can’t even speak, so silent is she on stage. Stetson is alo on hand for this one, providing some circular flurries on his saxophone, a graceful undercurrent to the pipes. As is his normal, a saxophone sounds never quite like a saxophone in his hands.

Kindle The Fire is a short and atmospheric piece, the shortest here, at forty seconds, with found sounds of a Skye gale incoming, or, knowing the area, what the locals might consider a balmy breeze. As it segues into She went Astray, there come blasts of foghorn like pipe notes, before further vocalising, I think some multi-tracked puirt a beul, filtered with a touch of cross-fade, where the sound and rhythm is more intrinsic than any meaning to the wordplay. This is all feeling like an alternate universe, a Hebrides where Sun Ra and Moondog can share a croft with the Clan MacCrimmon, heriditary pipers to the MacLeods.

A Sumptuous orchestral feast

Bog An Lochan offers a workout to Chaimbeul’s fingers, and is a brief testimony to her ability. It is sobering to appreciate that these last three tracks, together, last less time than the introductory drone at the start of the record. Priorities, I guess, and without irony. The following paired Squabag/The Sweeper is perhaps the most orthodox selection here, at least from the perspective of the Scots-Gaelic tradition, and finds the piper live, alongside three others, unnamed. It is a sumptuous orchestral feast of bellows and air. Possibly cacophony to any untutored ear, all too quickly a polyphony of purpose chimes through, as the tune(s) become apparent and weave between each other. This should be compulsory for playing loud, on a summer Sunday, with all the windows open. I could play it again and again, and probably am, as you read, relishing the prolonged closing drone note profundo.

Is that footsteps, as Duan opens, together with some percussive beat, maybe a staff or a stick? A repeating phrase from the pipes leads into a more stately setting, the church organ sound that pipes can manifest so well. There may, or not, be some Stetson in the mix there somewhere too, before it drops away, leaving a voice to solemnly intone a druidical rhyme relating to Hogmanay and/or the solstice. The voice is her father’s, Aonghas Phàdraig Chaimbeul, spoken, of course, in his native tongue. I dare say it was his foot steps, and his staff, at the beginning, too.

canntaireachd for the novice

With pipes in their swarm of bees mode, it is finally Chaimbeul and her brother, Eòsaph to close the album, with a minute of what sounds like gibberish. Entitled The Rain Is Wine And The Stones Are Cheese, all becomes explained, however, with the realisation that this is “canntaireachd”, the means by which pipe tunes and music are vocalised, often so as to teach to a new pupil. (This is indeed how the infant Chaimbeul first grappled with such music, at the feet of Rona Lightfoot, the highland piper who inspired first inspired her, and who appeared on her debut, The Reeling.)

Can a record, that contains so many moments of pleasure, be also described as baffling? I think it can, mainly as it gives so few flashes into the flurries of joyful notes she can squeeze out of her instrument, here often more content to make broader gestures around tonality and composition. But when they come, boy, do they come. It is also extremely short, a minute over half an hour. But for all that, I still commend it to you. I hope you can find the celebration within it that I did and do.

Heres the video to Bog An Lochan, which adds to the exhilaration of the music alone:

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