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Music, Science and Nature.
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Collaborators.
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MG Alba TV Series "Rùrachd"
“Loch Bracadale is a special place shaped by many diverse influences including Vikings, Gaels and Scots. Westerfjord likewise melds diverse influences from indie guitars to French café, electronica to The Clash, Gaelic Song and the classical music of the bagpipes. Blending this all with in-situ field recording, archival sound and scientific data, this album celebrates a little bit of Skye that is often overlooked.”
Available HereThe name of the title track comes from the Viking name for Loch Bracadale, and you can still find evidence of their occupation of the area. They famously used Loch Bracadale to shelter after being beaten at the Battle of Largs in 1263. The words link that past with the present and the (relatively) unchanging nature of the landscape. The male voice is my grandfather, James, telling how he and my granny, Mary Ann, came to Greepe from the neighbouring township of Roag in 1936..
This is a more recent story from when we had friends visiting from Seattle and took them to visit Skye. We were walking across the boggy terrain above the huge cliffs near Portnalong (5/4 time to signify our uneven progress) when I saw an eagle. I went across the bog as fast as I could to get to the cliff edge with the eagle nowhere to be seen. Just as I arrived at the top of the cliff, the eagle rose on a thermal right in front of me, looked me in the eye and flew off into the distance (this is in 3/4 time to signify its rather more elegant progress). I’ve still got the photo somewhere.
Invokes the feeling of our flesh-toned Renault 4 arriving at the single track road into Roag and navigating the hills and turns. Additional sounds include my great-uncle Murdo (from the Scottish Place-Name Survey), my bike and the sound of my kids and my cousin playing in the sea..
A story about going to the beach at Bharcasaig, set to music. The track features the voice of Gaelic singer Kirsteen Graham, who also has family ties to Bharcasaig. Kirsteen likewise has great memories of coming to Bharcasaig as a child. Some additional sounds were recorded while fishing from a canoe in the loch..
A story of the burn (stream) that comes down from Macleod’s Tables, two iconic flat-topped hills named for the ingenious way in which a MacLeod chief once saved face before the king. The burn in the song is a metaphor for all the peopIe who have come and gone from the area. Tying in with the flow of people, I used the protein sequence of haemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells) to make the sound used at the beginning and end..
It rains a lot in Skye, even in the summer. Even though we spent a lot of the holidays in full waterproofs and wellies, some days would be spent at the kitchen table playing cards. We tried to recreate some of the kitchen atmosphere (recorded in situ) and blend it with something jazzy that goes with the idea of playing cards..
Shearing sheep was a highlight of any summer holiday and even little kids could contribute to the big community effort. A fank is the walled enclosure that was used to corral your sheep for shearing, dipping etc. The name of the track comes from a pun that my dad once used. He had been a shepherd as a young man and told me that “catching sheep on an open hill is a fankless task”. Definitely a ‘dad joke’. The music is trying to convey the fun of rounding up sheep and bringing them in for shearing. Noises at the beginning and in the middle were recorded from various sources (yacht’s mast, cement mixer, empty storage drum) at Bharcasaig Bay where the you can still see the remains of the big fank..
Inspired by the emigrants who left Loch Bracadale, particularly my dad, Calum John, who went to work on ferries in the Clyde after he met my mum, Jean. The original words by my cousin, Mary Ann, are in the style of many a Gaelic song of ‘cianalas’ or longing for home..
During rationing my grandfather and his brother had a boat and helped supplement the kitchen table by catching fish and shellfish. My auntie Ann would often tell me that they’d come home from school, ask what was for dinner and roll their eyes at the prospect of having to eat lobster again! The audio is my grandfather’s brother - my great-uncle Murdo - participating in the Scottish Place Name Survey in 1968, and a hydrophonic recording from Loch Bracadale which is dominated by the sound of pistol shrimps - a very small member of the lobster family..
Early in the 2000s I was surprised to find a plantation of native woodland on the trail between Bharcasaig and Macleod’s Maidens, called Rebel’s Wood. It had been planted in honour of Joe Strummer of the Clash whose grandmother was a Gillies from Raasay. The connection between Loch Bracadale and Joe Strummer was like the collision of two worlds that I thought were unconnected. The tune is in the style of a pìobaireachd (the classical music of the bagpipe) with a guitar backing as a nod to Joe Strummer. While doing the fieldwork for the album I cycled from Struan round the loch, abandoning my bike at Rebel’s Wood and carrying on running out to The Maidens. We used my heart rate data converted to sound at the beginning of the track and altitude data converted to sound in the middle. The words are from ‘Òran a’ Chriosamas Tree’ - a comic song, ‘The Christmas Tree’ by Donald ‘Ruadh’ Campbell and recited by my auntie, Gaelic singer and activist Kenna Campbell..
My uncle Alasdair and his brother, Donald, both retired to Camustianavaig in central Skye where they’d been born and brought up. They owned a little boat together and put a herring net out in the bay to try to catch salmon (not very practical and highly illegal). One day my brother, Graham, and I spotted a float down on the net, suggesting there was something big in it, and seal cruising around nearby. My uncle’s brother tried to scare the seal by discharging a shotgun into the air (not in the direction of the seal) and we all made a beeline for the boat. Out at the net we found a salmon being held in the net by a gill and when my uncle tried to get it into the boat it slipped between his fingers onto the bottom of the bay. T h e wat e r ’s n ot t h at d e e p a n d my b rot h e r Gra h am ra n up to the house to get a long fishing rod that we rigged with a bit of wire to make a 15 ft gaff. As we pulled the fish into the boat and headed for shore, we saw the local policeman waiting for us. We carefully put the salmon in the front of the boat and covered it with my brother’s jumper. Being local, the policeman knew my uncle (also an ex-polis!) and his brother, and I’m sure that he didn’t believe any of our stories about fishing for mackerel or scaring crows away from the lambs with a shotgun. He did leave us with the suggestion that we might want to be more careful with the gun since it was mostly the tourists that it was scaring, and that we might want a shorter rod for boat-fishing. This track recreates the underwater scene beneath the mayhem..
The crashing guitars, idiosyncratic time signature and wailing fiddle in the music represent a storm (which are many and often spectacular on the loch). The words are from the poem ‘Blashy Wadder’ by Jen Hadfield about one such storm in Loch Bracadale and which wonderfully evokes the scenes of the loch in bad weather. The music incorporates a recording of my grandfather, James, singing and the poem was recited by my auntie Kenna..
Partly recorded on the beach at Greepe head (all sea and bird sounds 100% in situ). The composition stems from the point during lockdown when we had planned to go to Skye over the Christmas break and then the travel ban came into place. The rain battering off the window in our house brought me back to the many rainy days I spent on that beach – I was trying to recreate the serenity of being at the beach in the rain..
Skye is full of legends about Kelpies (malicious horses from the sea who could take on human form and charm locals to their death). The legend is that to protect yourself from a Kelpie you just have to cross running water – as a kid I didn’t find this particularly reassuring as the Kelpie could go back in the sea and avoid the running water. So, I updated the legend with the notion that the reason you’ll rarely visit a west coast beach without seeing a piece of blue nylon rope is because it’s like kryptonite to Kelpies. I took the Raman spectrum of a piece of blue nylon rope from the beach at Greepe, turned it into sound and incorporated it in the middle section..
I didn’t get a driving licence until I was in my thirties and the last time I saw my grandfather alive, I had taken the bus to Portree, stayed in a hostel and then rented a bike the next day to cross the island and visit him. I was telling him how I’d recently walked across Spain after finishing my PhD, which led him to tell me about his time in the merchant navy where he sailed to Gibraltar and piped the crew ashore. I’d never heard this story before and hadn’t even known that he had travelled as far as the Mediterranean. The main chord sequence is based on an Andalucian cadence that gives it a bit of a Spanish groove and the brilliant trumpet solo makes it feel like the end of a Spaghetti Western..
Guitars and Bass Colin Campbell Ken Donaldson Nick Turner * Pipes and whistles Robert Gray * Strings Ewen Henderson* Accordion Neil Sutcliffe * Brass Colin Steele Marcus Britton * Drums James Mackintosh * Vocals Mary Ann Kennedy Kenna Campbell
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Single Releases from the Westerfjord CD Available for download from the usuual streaming services |