The Chaimbeul amalgamation of soundworlds
From Brìghde Chaimbeul at KW Saturday to Aerialists at the Lido Tuesday, with stops on the Isle of Skye & in Aberdeen
Scottish piper Brìghde Chaimbeul played a solo set at KW Studios downtown this past Saturday, November 8th. She'd already been on tour for over two months, however this show in Vancouver – her first time being here – was only the second of her North American leg. Between then and today, she played Mount Vernon, Seattle, and Portland; she plays twice in California this weekend, then five more American dates this month.
I brought up Chaimbeul's latest album, Sunwise, this summer in one of our 'Outside the Changes' album roundups. I called it "[a] mostly soundscaping album from the piper [...] It does have a couple fiddle-tune moments plus vocal lilting."
That's indeed what we heard throughout the show last Saturday. Chaimbeul began with the droning first track "Dùsgadh/Waking", delivered a couple more tracks including the chimes and lilts of "A' Chailleach", and closed with the reel "Bog an Lochan".
Chaimbeul has a previous album, Carry Them With Us, released in 2023 on the same German record label called Glitterbeat. From that record, she performed "Tha Fonn Gun Bhi Trom (I Am Disposed of Mirth)", a piece that had been its lead single. This music was a collaboration between her and another drone-friendly artist, from a generation older: saxophonist Colin Stetson.
She also has a debut album, The Reeling, from 2019 – when she was 20 years old – on the British label River Lea Records. She is thus labelmates with a favourite artist of mine, Sam Amidon, who put out his record called Salt River there.
Chaimbeul has performed and recorded with the likes of Caroline Polachek ("Blood and Butter", time 2:50) and been written up in The Wire as her international media profile has grown. Her own music unites ambient, New Age, folk, electronic (through her effects pedals) and improv sensibilities, making her an ideal candidate to pack a small room in downtown Vancouver with the weirdos like us who key in on such things. The only interruption in her music was when she pulled out a small book and read, in a soft voice, a folk tale about an old faerie-man who played the chanter and appeared suddenly in a family's farmhouse. "I'm going to tell you a story," she said as the only context.
Chaimbeul was born and raised on Skye, an island in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. I went there once.
