Vana

Originally a piper, on this, the sequel to his 2017 album, Sanctuary, the Treacherous Orchestra’s Ross Ainslie again flexes his multi­instrumental talents and draws on influences including the jazz, Indian and East European traditions. Joined by a band including Grit Orchestra founder Greg Lawson (fiddle), Scottish National Jazz Orchestra saxophonist Paul Towndrow and Hamish Napier (harmonium and keys) and calling on an array of guests on banjo, tablas, electric guitar and sarod, Ainslie produces often intricate but always amiable melodies in a musical landscape that’s cinematic and crisply executed and negotiates an attractive series of rises and falls in tempo.

Always at the music’s heart is the piping tradition that reared Ainslie, even as Towndrow and another guest, guitar virtuoso Graeme Stephen improvise with jazz-inclined creativity on ‘Absinthe in Aranya’ and as Ainslie himself adds whistles, cittern and bansuri. It doesn’t take a great leap to imagine a pipe band playing ‘Gift of Gods’ and there’s a logical transition between John Wilson’s natural canntaireachd (the oral way of teaching pipe music) and the full-on bagrock of ‘Hope in the Chaos’.