Esoteric Sounds

Brighde Chaimbeul on the magic of experimental melody

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THERE'S a moment, during Caroline Polachek's set at this summer's Glastonbury, when the camera shifts stage left - to where a lone piper teases out a melody, haunting and primal.

These global stages - Eurosonic, the Hammersmith Apollo, assembled global dignitaries at the COP26 opening ceremony are fast becoming second nature to Brighde Chaimbeul and her Scottish smallpipes. Brighde, who released her second solo album Carry Them With Us earlier this year, is a quiet advocate for the versatility and cross-genre potential of the instrument - a bellows-blown, more subtle-sounding take on the traditional Highland bagpipes, which has grown in popularity since its early 1980s revival.

"The starting point, for me, is the drones," explains Brighde, a softly-spoken native of Skye. "There's a particular atmosphere, a feeling of trance, that repeated drone creates, and my songwriting has increasingly been drawn in that direction."