For a number of years now (since 2015), James Yorkston has been curating Tae Sup wi’ a Fifer, an evening of entertainment at the Adam Smith Theatre in Kirkcaldy which has featured the likes of Dick Gaughan, Karine Polwart, Richard Dawson and Lisa O’Neil. What makes this club so entertaining is its diversity and range…where else would you have found Martin Carthy on the same bill as Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip?
Anyhow, thanks to the generosity of Creative Scotland, we have a series of online Tae Sups, to help ease us through the winter.
Each episode features three or more varied and complementary talents from different global avenues of indie, rock, folk, electronic and spoken word, performing from the comfort of their own homes or another intimate space. As well as commissioning the sessions, not to mention performing in one or two of them himself, James provides introductions and links recorded while out and about in his home village of Cellardyke, Fife.
Episode #1 (with Andrew Wasylyk, Kris Drever, Harry Josephine Giles and more) is available to watch and share now, as is Episode #2 (with Inge Thomson, Faith Eliott, James Yorkston and Rab Noakes) and Episode #3 (with Jenny Lindsay, Bell Lungs, Djana Gabrielle and Rab Noakes).
The latest, Episode #4, the first of 2021, is now available and features the incredible Brìghde Chaimbeul (pictured above) whose 2019 debut album The Reeling we reviewed here. Plus Shee, the alias of Dundee-based Scottish-Portuguese artist and producer Su Shaw, alt-pop band Firestations and finally – James Yorkston and The Secondhand Orchestra whose album ‘The Wide Wide River‘ we recently reviewed here. In his review, Thomas Blake concluded:
There is space all over this album – thinking space, breathing space – space to be interpreted by the musicians and also by listeners. It is a minimal aesthetic that owes something to the determined restraint of krautrock, but its effect here is inclusive and intriguing. That combination of closeness and mystery – a thread that runs through all of his records – is one of the reasons Yorkston is amongst the very best songwriters of his generation; The Wide, Wide River is yet another career highlight.
There is more about each performer below:
BRÌGHDE CHAIMBEUL
Raised in Sleat on the Isle of Skye, Brìghde has devised a completely new way of arranging for pipe music that emphasises the rich textural drones of the smallpipes. Her debut album The Reeling was named as Folk Album of the Month by The Guardian, given five-star reviews in both fRoots and Songlines, lavished with praise by BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and listed as one of The Quietus’s Albums of the Year. It was nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award and won a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award
brichaimbeul.com
SHEE
SHHE is the alias of Dundee-based Scottish-Portuguese artist and producer Su Shaw. Released in 2019 via Björk’s label One Little Independent Records, her self-titled debut album received acclaim from Clash, The Skinny and Electronic Sound and was nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award. SHHE is a solo project musically but also a platform for collaboration, working on projects with filmmaker Harry Clark and dancers from Scottish Dance Theatre, artist designer Tommy Perman and a forthcoming release of reworks by renowned artists including rRoxymore, Sophia Loizou, Alva Noto and more.
shhe.bandcamp.com/album/re
FIRESTATIONS
Frequently championed by among others BBC 6 Music’s Marc Riley, London-based conceptual alt-pop band Firestations released their acclaimed debut album The Year Dot on the isle of Eigg, Scotland’s Lost Map Records in 2018. In this video, they perform songs from their forthcoming new EP Melted Medium, which will be released in March as part of a series of interlinked EPs titled Automatic Tendencies.
firestationsband.com
JAMES YORKSTON AND THE SECOND-HAND ORCHESTRA
Domino Records have just released James’s new album The Wide, Wide River, a collaboration with Swedish ensemble The Second Hand Orchestra – in this video they link up together online to play one of its standout songs, ‘Struggle’. James was an integral member of the much lauded and hugely influential Fence Collective (King Creosote, Pictish Trail, KT Tunstall, Beta Band). Throughout his career, he has released a host of critically acclaimed albums both as a solo artist and as part of the collaborative project Yorkston Thorne Khan.
jamesyorkston.co.uk
More here: https://www.taesup.co.uk/