Carry Them With Us

Chaimbeul's richly experimental new album sits perfectly in Glitterbeat's almost always excellent catalogue of outlier artists from world music traditions; this Isle of Skye native's approach to Celtic music is like no other. She makes use of the small pipes’ double-note drones, weaving trance atmospheres and pulsing tapestries of near-abstract sound, joined on pieces such as ‘’S Mi Gabhail an Rathaid (I Take the Road)’ by Canadian saxophonist Colin Stetson (Arcade Fire) whose resonating pulse network of saxophone lines melds richly with the small pipes and harmonium.

Album opener ‘Pililiù (The Call of the Redshank)’ is a majestic, soaring start, combining melodies and retelling them as stories, tales from the tradition transmogrified by Chaimbeul and Stetson's melding of musics, while ‘Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom (I Am Disposed of Mirth)’ has a systems-music quality, combined with trance-like EDM.

Though largely instrumental, Chaimbeul's voice does rise up through the mix on the likes of the closing ‘Bonn Beinn Eadarra (The Haunting)’, another instrument to alter the scale of the trance, that at times seems to achieve giant dimensions, soaring high like birds in flight. This is music to take you away.