Light blue touch paper and ignite the imagination! Sood and Morrison take neo-trad somewhere fully primal and provoke the senses accordingly.

A LIMINAL GAELFORCE

Angeline Morrison we know, Arun Sood possibly less so, but each have a track record that gives a pretty good idea of what to expect here, especially as the Gaelic title of this collaboration translates as Brown/Black. But here the emphasis is, loosely, around those skin tones in relation to the Gàidhealtachd, or Gaeldom. But rather than seeking out the black history of the Highlands and Islands, and there is one, if tenuous, here their collective aim is more a liminal attempt to connect, as what they call Brown Hebrideans, to a Scottish past, embracing the tradition, if employing also tropes of dub, drone and electronica.

STRIKING VOCALS, ELECTRONICS & TAPE LOOPS

Morrison, if better known for her groundbreaking The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience. has always erred towards the ethereal and spiritual worlds, to a hauntological psych-folk. And, though she is often considered to be a child of her adoptive Cornwall, or the English Midlands, where she grew up, bear in mind that her father, and Sood’s mother, for that matter, came of Gaelic stock in the Western Isles and West Highlands respectively. Sood is a writer, musician, artist and academic, currently also based in the South-West, if just the wrong side the Tamar to remain fully in Celtdom. His Searching Erskine, from 2022, blurred the boundaries between ambient, modern-folk and contemporary classical, being a mix of sound and field recordings, with accompanying strings, electronics and tape loops. Together, that same feed and mix is maintained, this time with Morrison’s striking vocals.

NO DISTRACTIONS

Although there was an earlier single, it is easier to think of this set as one prolonged set-piece, taken in and for full immersion, rather than dislocating the flow into standalone segments. Avoid any attempt to cherry pick. Turn off shuffle. Allow yourself 45 minutes and free yourself from disturbance and distraction. Yes, a big ask in these days of diminished attention spans, but it will guarantee a better experience. If you too have teuchter blood, it may help, but it is by no means compulsory.

SIMULTANEOUSLY LULLING & LAIRY

It is the single with which the set opens, time having warmed and familiarised it into an old friend, a role for that for that sort of release that I had never before fully considered. Over tentative piano Morrison croons lowly, a background drone of dread beginning to emerge. Simultaneously lulling and lairy, a slow repeated judder of beats emerges, gradually bedding in as it pulses segmentally, ahead finally finding a looped refrain, drifting up from the distance, now in forward seeking propulsion. “Brown girl, do you hear me” is that refrain in translation. It closes with a snippet of vocoded puirt à beul, before sounds of some ragged choral singing get blown in from afar.

Diarmaid Buidhe Donn is a gentler affair, with a handful of Morrisons vocalising in a fashion Morrison calls mythopoeic. A brief and mystical moment, it carries a sense of pre-religion. Which introduces ideally the recorded sounds of Sood’s uncle, from 1952, psalm-singing Òran Molaidh (Praising Song), a reminder that the sounds of worship in the Western Isles seem to carry more sense of the pagan than elsewhere. The gaunt unstructured voice, originally unaccompanied, instrumentation being deemed a defilement of the Sabbath, here sits in a cocoon of building electronic/orchestral layers. The almost military snare drum implies impermanence, with Sood’s voice then a warm burr of explanation, if more purred than narrated, before the soundscape implodes into considered carnage.

WICKERMAN ADJACENT GOTHIC

Teann A-nall Mo Chailin Donn is an old song from one of the Uists, the arrangement reprising the organic/electronic shimmer used so effectively before, and has an appropriate sense of the maritime about it. Saltair Na Rann is then moodier stuff, full of forboding and darker elements, with muttered words barely audible. I dare say there is somewhere an explanation and breakdown, but it feels almost richer without. Tha Mi Sgith is a nursery rhyme, but in distort and decay, as the voices of Sood’s daughters cut and paste a collage of Wickerman adjacent gothic dread. Fairy Song, as it is in the English, is entirely apt.

Sood again narrates for the beginning of Gruagath Og An Fhuilt Bhain, this time in the Gaelic, before what sounds like chanting monks enter into a presumed further hymn. Think Enigma, but with a contribution of Hebridean Gnosticism. A powerful track, it capably bumps geese, acting as a mid-project ponder point, before the more pastoral Si I An Taobh Geal Donn A Rug A Mac Dhomh, which has Morrison both speaking the repeated title and singing over that. Flutes toot and strings soar. But what might be gentle becomes gradually eerie, as an eldritch fiddle scrapes out a warning.

GENTLY HYPNOTIC

Mo Nighean Donn As Bòidche, or My Most Beautiful Brown Haired Girl, we know, sort of, from Joy Dunlop and others, often in instrumental settings. Here it is gifted a gently hypnotic arrangement, Morrison cooing over muted electronica and what could be patters of steel pans, but probably aren’t. It is a neat touch, to my mind impacting the singers own mixed heritage. The repetition steeps in memorably, it feeling a staging post, before some snatched spoken word narratives flit in and out for Mo Màthair, which gives an impression of being the advice given, to Morrison, ahead tackling the Gaelic of the song before: “Some of the pronunciations will be absolutely right and some will be not quite right“. (A reassuring aside of “Nothing wrong with that” is also dropped in.)

There seems an altogether change of tack for Allein Duinn, an ominous Nordic Noir that smacks of Vikings and invasion; bear in mind the Western Isle were part of Norway between 1079 and 1266. This largely instrumental piece of shimmer and drone, over which wordless vocal hovers, builds with textures that, of all people, conjure up a a Stornoway John Carpenter, Halloween at Hushinish Point. The closer, Bu Chaomh Leam Bhith Mireadh, which follows, picks up on that atmospheric, the vocal a looped clarion of no small disconcert, with an accompanying grind of mechanical discord, like the hulls of ships savaged by the seas. A disquieting if strangely rewarding conclusion.

NOT A SUMMER POPSICLE

As you may have surmised, this is no frothy lightweight summer popsicle, but don’t let that, or my rambling impressions, put you off. Indeed, your listen may light up completely different bulbs. With so little spoonfeeding to prepare the listener, it is individual imagination that takes up the baton and runs. Yes, the material may all derive from 10th century texts, the actual Saltair Na Rann, but the inspirations arising therefrom are all Sood and Morrison, together with producer, Alastair Smith, providing touch papers for the listener to light in any way which they see fit.

Try out Òran Molaidh:

Arun Sood : Website

Angeline Morrison : Website

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