The collaborative relationship between Brìghde Chaimbeul and Colin Stetson is a shifting one. They first crossed paths in 2021, when Chaimbeul recorded a handful of Stetson compositions for a Disney series about NASA. Then, on Chaimbeul’s 2023 album Carry Them With Us, Stetson’s freeform sax provided an unconventional backing for her traditional Scottish smallpipes, yielding spellbinding results. Two years later, Stetson featured on A Chailleach, a standout track from Chaimbeul’s acclaimed Sunwise album, while Chaimbeul has also contributed to Stetson’s solo albums. Now, on All the Light in the World, they are billed as a duo for the first time.
On paper, theirs is a meeting of two very distinct musical heritages. Stetson comes from the world of experimental jazz and the American avant-garde, and specialises in microtonic, multiphonic, decidedly non-traditional techniques. Chaimbeul, by contrast, draws from the well of Scottish pipe music: a highly traditional and specific brand of folk music. But while her practice has its roots in the past, she relishes the improvisational freedom that the smallpipes give her. Both artists have a penchant for long-form pieces; both are well-versed in the power of drones and multiple textures.
Carry Them With Us saw them develop a signature sound: it was almost as if their instruments were fused, creating a single, layered drone from which unexpected melodic paths emerged. The eight tracks on All the Light in the World start from a similar basis but are more expansive and more complex. They also seem more mobile: opener To Me, My Love is built on a rhythmic pulse, while Chaimbeul creates a minimal, siren-like motif which expands in complexity and melodic intricacy as the piece progresses. Stetson sets up a repetitive, cascading riff that grows in power, and the piece flourishes with a trance-like momentum, before quieting and drifting in its final moments.
Stetson’s insistent throb and Chaimbeul’s quicksilver phrasing set up the dramatic Dirt Dance, which flits away from its repetitive intro in a virtuosic flurry of notes. Stetson’s pointillist excursions flit away and return with thrilling speed and frequency. Seamount embellishes Chaimbeul’s long, slow-changing notes with a quick, heartbeat-like repetition. Even Though the Frost Is Harsh is the most conventionally folky melody – a chilly but stirring dance – but Stetson heats things up with thudding, bassy notes and guttural vocalisations.
There is a distinctly wintery feeling to the album, which is unsurprising given that it was recorded in January, during a lengthy snowfall, in a studio called The End of the World. A tune called Snowfall perfectly encapsulates this, with Chaimbeul’s gracefully icy melody providing one of the album’s more serene and dreamlike moments. It’s not without its strangeness though, as Stetson’s doleful foghorn sax lingers underneath the surface. New Moon of the Age, by contrast, is quickening and restorative, the musical equivalent of a dip in a cold sea.
The title track’s spooky intro gives way to Chaimbeul’s wild, bracing melody, while the gentle closer Time and Absence features extended drones and glacial chord changes, doing away with rhythm entirely and leaning into blissful ambience as the two instruments mesh together on a level that seems almost cellular. It may sound strange to say that avant-garde saxophone and traditional Scottish smallpipes are a perfect match, but in Chaimbeul and Stetson’s hands it feels like they were made for each other.
All the Light in the World (September 11th, 2026) Invada