Niteworks – Air Fàir an Là
Comann Music – 17 August 2018
Successfully combining traditional music and electronica can be a tricky thing. While, in theory, anyone with a soundboard can do it, to do so successfully requires a certain subtlety of touch combined with a firm grasp of traditional music’s roots, and a well-tuned musical sensibility that keeps the whole thing authentic, interesting, and honest. Like I said, tricky.
Luckily enough, since the release of their EP in 2011, their debut album NW in 2015, and now their second album Air Fàir An Là, Skye band Niteworks have consistently proved that they have the whole thing well in hand.
Niteworks is Ruairidh Graham, Allan MacDonald, Christopher Nicolson and Innes Strachan. Having previously self-produced their material, bringing the skills and experience of techno producer Alex Menzies (A.K.A. Alex Smoke) to Air Fàir An Là’s fusion of traditional music with club sounds and dance beats adds a tight modern edginess to the album, while collaborations with high-profile traditional musicians such as Julie Fowlis, Ian Morrison, Kinnaris Quintet, SIAN, and Ellen MacDonald (of Dàimh) keep it rooted in the tradition.
These traditional roots are apparent in the album’s name – Air Fàir An Là. Drawn from a 17th century poem written by Mairi nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (also known as Mary Macleod), translated from Gaelic, Air Fàir An Là means “at dawn of the day.” Born in 1569 in Rowdil, Harris, McLeod spent most of her long life on Skye. A stalwart of a new school of poetry that emerged in the 17th century, her poetry was, according to the 1893 Encyclopedia Britannica, celebrated for its natural rhythms, heroic imagery, and poignant yet fresh style. Nursemaid to a succession of chieftains, she was required, according to legend, to compose her poetry neither indoors nor outdoors, a conundrum she cannily solved by composing from doorway thresholds – one foot in each world but beholden to neither.
The word threshold not only describes the line between the inside of a house and the outside world, it also describes the defining magnitude or intensity of action that must be exceeded to manifest a reaction, a phenomenon, or result. Crossing a cultural threshold means the materialization of new ideas – a state whereby a community’s traditionally accepted characteristics and culture takes a leap forward towards previously unexplored territories, including emerging musical genres. According to the Niteworks lads, the aim of Air Fàir An Là is to blur the line between traditional Gaelic songs and music and hard-hitting electronica, and they cross that particular musical threshold with convincing verve.
Electronica’s driving beat of is a powerful tool to get the sternum vibrating and the heart pumping and it is put to good use in Air Fàir An Là’s opening track Dookin’, the Scots word for “dipping”. A soft pulsation of sound forms the backdrop to this Mike Katz tune (Battlefield Band) and Kinnaris Quintet’s fiddles combine with pipes to set up the sense of expectation suggested by the album’s name.
On the album’s title track, SIAN – Eilidh Cormack, Ellen MacDonald and Ceitlin Smith – provide crisp-sweet vocals, overlaying Air Fàir An Là‘s dark backbeat with a strobing call-and-answer waulking song. The insistent beat brings a strange appreciation of the intrinsically rhythmic nature of working history behind waulking songs. The tweed wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Featuring Lewis singer Iain Morrison, the gradually intensifying layers of loping sound on Like Wolves In The Night interweave with Morrison’s distinctive lambent vocals. The following emigration song Òran Fir Ghriminis on which Julie Fowlis’ coolly-assured singing is underpinned by complex whirling drum beats, showcases one of the great strengths of Air Fàir An Là – the delicacy of its juxtaposition of traditional song and modern music. This combining of old and new is exemplified in the next track which takes its title from the Skye crofter and bard Callum Ruadh Macneacail. The snares bounce off the soft-spoken Macneacail who is clearly in fiery form in a defiantly eloquent late 1960’s interview during which he unequivocally states his opinion about the importance of the individuality of artistic expression as well as giving his personal benediction on the passing of the tradition down through the years, and the use of “modern means” to keep that tradition alive.
Allan MacDonald’s pipes on Iain Mcgee’s swim towards the surface slowly through rolling drum beats, punching through a twitching synth-riff, before submerging again, ushering in a St. Kilda lullaby, Do Dhà Shùil, featuring Ellen MacDonald’s lush vocals, this beautiful song glints and flickers against a lonely sky-scape of sound.
The flinty melancholy of Lùths [Gabh Greim] gradually grows in hypnotic waves that bring to mind a deep-water drop-off and the forlorn loneliness of some sounding submarine or sea creature. The sea-abyss tone lightens with Cumhachd as Allan MacDonald’s earthy vocals merge with his pipe music before joining forces with the voices of fiddles and layered synth.
Days dawn and days end, and on Air Fàir An Là night falls with the traditional strathspey, Highlander’s Farewell, the synth taking a backseat as the fiddle picks up speed and power culminating in what sounds like a warning siren that rises and falls before tapering off into darkness in an uneasy discordance of sound.
The line that is drawn between the past, the present, and the future of traditional music on Air Fàir An Là is a fine one but it also remains respectful, with the eclectic choice of songs adding a historical depth that may not at first be apparent. But by never tipping too far in either direction, Air Fàir An Là’s constant tension between traditional music’s past and possible future is powerful stuff and commands, rather than demands, the listener’s attention. Each dawn marks the beginning of something new, different and unknown, and a transition from what has passed and what will be. So too does Air Fàir An Là.