In 2023, Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul released her second album, Carry Them with Us on Glitterbeat, and which featured Canadian saxophonist Colin Stetson. Chaimbeul has just announced a follow-up album, ‘Sunwise’ (out June 27th on tak:til/ Glitterbeat). She is once again joined by Stetson, as well as guests on uilleann pipes and organ, as well as her father Aonghas Phàdraig (spoken word) and brother Eòsaph (vocals).
Her last album was also in our Top 100 Albums of 2023 and Thomas Blake’s Top 10 Albums of 2023, in which he wrote: Nobody else sounds anything like Chaimbeul. The smallpipes player and composer is still only in her mid-twenties, but it feels like she has occupied her own incomparable furrow for ever, bridging the gap between the lost sounds of the past and futuristic ambience. Here, she enlists the help of experimental sax giant Colin Stetson and creates an album that moves from stillness to bursts of dreamlike energy.
With her new album she looks set to extend that fearless, experimental ethos, pushing the boundaries and expectations of both experimental and traditional sonics. Accompanying the announcement is her lead single Bog an Lochan. The melody of “Bog an Lochan” (“The Bog of the Small Loch”) is from a traditional Scottish reel which is connected to the Gaelic folk dance tradition.
Chaimbeul shared this background story and context for the track, a condensed excerpt from “The Gaelic Otherworld” by Scottish folklorist John Gregorson Campbell (1836-1891):
“The Gaelic belief recognises no Fairyland or realm different from the earth’s surface on which men live and move. The dwellings are underground, but it is on the natural face of the earth the Fairies find their sustenance and pasture their cattle, and on which they forage and roam.
The first of winter and the last night of the year is a favourite time for encounters with the fairies, as well as on wild stormy nights of mist and driving rain. They are given to leaving their dwellings underground and taking away whomever of the human race they find helpless or unguarded or unwary.”
Watch the accompanying video, filmed by Jonny Ashworth and John Smith.
Stream: https://idol-io.ffm.to/boganlochan
The release of “Bog an Lochan” coincides with her first US tour and an appearance at the influential Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee (USA). Brìghde Chaimbeul has also announced UK festival dates in August and an 8-date UK tour in September (see below).
UK Live Dates
Mon 4 Aug/ Tue 5 Aug – The Sidmouth Folk Festival
Frid 29 Aug – Moseley Folk & Arts Festival, Moseley Park, Birmingham
Sat 30 Aug – Smugglers Festival, near Deal, East Kent
Wed 17 Sept – London, Round Chapel
Thu 18 Sept – Bristol, The Mount Without
Fri 19 Sept – Brighton Komedia
Sun 21 Sept – Cambridge Junction
Mon 22 Sept – Manchester, Band on the Wall
Tue 23 Sept – Leeds, Brudenell Social
Wed 24 Sept – Glasgow, Òran Mór
Thu 25 Sept – Edinburgh, Pleasance Theatre