Niteworks leave the stage on an endorphin heavy, dopaminergic high. An essential document.
FLAG-BEARERS
Too late for the lists of last year, this live document slipped out with little much of a fanfare, towards the end of 2025, but I’m not going to allow that. Niteworks, who played their last show on 16/11/24, in Scotland, had been, for 10 years and more, the pre-eminent flag bearers for neo-trad Gaelictronica, and, during much of that time, the only such proponents. The notion that electronic house music might have a kinship with the music of the Scottish Highlands and Islands first came together with the groundbreaking fusions of Martyn Bennett, but, since his untimely death, in 2005, it took this quartet from Skye to really run with the concept.
Synthesisers, sequencers and samplers became brought together with bagpipes and fiddle, anchored to terra firma by a wall of live and programmed drums. The sound was a mix of instrumental and vocal, needing the band to have on hand a selection of some of the finest singers in the tradition, singing mainly in Gaelic but occasionally Scots and, even, when all else fails, English. In their lifetime the band released 4 albums, with a slew of additional material made available on EPs. These would often be especially curated re-mixes or recordings from prominent shows, such as the music for Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations, in 2018 and 2020.
A FIVEFOLD HOOLEY
Was it the same show as performed at Islington’s Garage, a week before? Well, arguably, yes, as in the same songs in the same order, give or take a few changes of title, but there the similarity ends. However much hooley around we 400 souls could raise in London, a home crowd of 5 times that can raise a whole lot more. You know how live LPs often resort to ramping up the crowd noise? Here it would not surprise me if they had to mike it down. And that’s not because they sound quiet, either. I know full how well received is this sort of music, in the country of origin.
THE CEREMONY STARTS
So then, pop on the needle, this being available, as yet, only on vinyl or in digital form. The tension is already apparent, right from the outset. The ceremony starts, for it is one, with the eerie instrumental backdrop of Lùths, a moody synthscape to set the scene. As the lights come up; you can “hear” them, or their effect, it segueing straight into Dookin’, thumping four solid beats to the floor . And, if that first segment shows just how far the band have come since 2011’s introductory offering, the second is just as triumphant as the studio version, from 2018’s An Fàir An Là, indicative of it being the set opener over most their career, at least since then.
Rather than an academic reconstruction of the studio, there is enough difference here to demonstrate that, electrickery aside, this is very much a live band. As such, there is less blur between the wash of individual instruments, rendering permanent guest, Fiona MacAskill’s fiddle, a much clearer space in the mix, with similar courtesies for Allan MacDonald’s bagpipes, the nominal front man of the unit. The bass of Christopher Nicolson is also mixed high, and the elegant simplicity of his additions hit perfectly the gap between the organic and the electronic, much of that latter coming from Innes Strachan, main man at the myriad banks of kit. At the back, the glorious thump of Ruairidh Graham remains always an impeccable metronome.
SEAMLESSNESS BETWEEN GENRES
Wasting no time, guest singer, Ellen Macdonald, of Sian and also Dàimh, bounds on for the first burst of song in her native tongue. A newer song, Gura Mise Tha Fo Éislein, coming from the last studio outing, A’ Ghrian, it is the best example of how waulking songs might meet with rave culture. (And I dare say the tweed would be made a whole lot faster, too!)
And so it goes, with next a run of instrumentals that show off the seamlessness between the chosen genres. MacDonald and Nicolson may double on additional electronic keyboards and computers, but never do they lose sight of the road to the Isles. And, if they do, returning fiddle and pipes swiftly redress any imbalance. These culminate in the tremendous Somhairle, with it’s hugely emotive insertion of Sorley (= Somhairle, in Gaelic) Maclean’s warning around the loss of Gaelic language and culture, which always makes this teuchter weep.
Macdonald is then back for Maraiche, a song from their eponymous 2017 album, the join between her vocal and the trance backing perfect. Early midset may be then an odd time to then present two songs with farewell in their title. Having said, the first, Highlander’s Farewell is a neo-trad belter, of the sort they have so many up their sleeves, so no complaints come from here. However it is the second, Farewell, that shines brighter, showing off more the ethereal mistiness of their stamping grounds of origin, and is, as such, a glorious contrast. As it builds into an extravagance of textures, the emotional heft is immense and satisfying. Not for the first time, the interplay between fiddle and pipes, is extraordinary.
FROM BOUNTIFUL TO BLISSFUL
Between the last album and this final tour, the band issued one final single, an entirely reworked version of Runrig’s An Toll Dubh, both in debt and in honour of that trailblazing Scottish band, so adept in the field of applying new coats of pain to ancient Gaelic culture. This features Macdonald, together now with her Sian bandmates, Eilidh Cormack and Ceitlin Lilidh, and the cheer for their appearance is almost as immense as for when the show started.
A little sterile on disc, live it is transformed. Staying with these three sirens, Teannaibh Diùth has the evening suddenly leaping from bountiful to blissful. The repeated wooeywooeywooey of synth, underpinning their keening vocals is even more remarkable than in the earlier recorded version. (If you can’t work out what I mean, play it and it will become immediately apparent, if then forcing you to buy the album.)
On a roll now, a change of singer brings on Beth Malcolm, for the powerhouse rendition of John Riley, the song that guaranteed her permanent guest status on any tour since it first aired, doing her own reputation no harm either. The pinnacle of the Niteworks headline set at Cambridge Folk Festival in 2023, how does it fare now, in the pecking order of this farewell show? Well, you might wonder, with the band chucking in a couple more instrumentals while you ponder that point, each going back to the origins of the band. The one, here named 1999, might be better remembered from Binary Finary, being, essentially, a version of their dance floor hit, if one number higher. The closer is a another time-bomb, from their own past, Obair Oidche, the title track, and a cracker, from their debut.
A SUCCESSION OF REPETITIVE BEATS
The end? You havin’ a larf! That wasn’t enough for London, and it certainly wasn’t, either, for Glasgow. With, I suspect, a foreshortened gap for the purposes of the record, they come banging back with a further full-on techno attack. Called, aptly, Techno Belter here, and ARP Choir on the tour setlist, this has multiple Gaelic choral samples and is, joyously, characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats, as the Criminal Justice act of 1994 would have it. Essentially sequencer driven, it blends perfectly into Sub Disco, which is still one of the best names for a track I can think of, and which may be the lodestone of the Niteworks sound. Already a full on banger, it has you entranced, even ahead the entry of MacAskill and MacDonald, fiddle then pipes, in eventual glorious instrumental unison.
A BOLT OF UNBRIDLED EMPATHY
An Fàir An Là follows, noting the audible audience response to the return of Sian to the stage. The title track of the 3rd album, here it keeps the audience waiting, with a prolonged electronic sequence, wafting and wending around the soundsystem speakers, building up a slow momentum, until Graham finds the correct warp speed. Each of Macdonald, Cormack and Lilidh are superb singers, but it when they combine that the real genie is unbottled, the Pandora unboxed. I’m guessing many in Glasgow weren’t anticipating what came next, as hadn’t London a week before.
A’ Ghrian, the phenomenal last track on the album of the same name, is a track the band seem always to have been shy of playing live. But, as in London, here it was and here it is, even better, should that be possible, with a Gaelic Choir also present. On disc, Cormack confirms the London show was not my heightened emotions alone, her vocal confirmed to be an astonishing bolt of unbridled empathy. As her Sian colleagues and the choir chime in alongside, it is almost religious in effect. As they used to say, forgive the smudgy ink. And, yes, it is/was clearly the new pinnacle.
IS IT REALLY THE END?
What do you call a record that is too late to figure in the best of 2025 and too late to be included in this year? I call it Solas An Maidne and it leaves the legacy of Niteworks prouder and more perfect than ever. Synth man Strachan is now i/c Lusa, with Beth Malcolm, but the wherebouts of the other three remains elusive. If this really is the end, where are the new beginnings?
Here’s An Fàir An Là, extended intro and all, filmed on the same night as the show:
Niteworks online: Website