Brìghde Chaimbeul – Sunwise (tak:til / Glitterbeat, 2025)
Scottish small pipes innovator Brìghde Chaimbeul will release her third album, Sunwise, on June 27, 2025, via tak:til / Glitterbeat.
Following the critical success of her 2023 album Carry Them With Us, Chaimbeul delves deeper into folklore and drone-based minimalism while continuing to expand the sound possibilities of the small pipes. While her last project featured extensive collaboration, most notably with saxophonist Colin Stetson, Sunwise is largely a solo effort, shaped by two years of solo touring.
Sunwise reflects Chaimbeul’s evolving mastery of her musical instrument, with a heightened focus on tone and recording detail.
On her third album, Sunwise, Brìghde Chaimbeul continues to expand the sonic possibilities of the Scottish small pipes with a vision that feels both ancient and unmistakably forward-looking. Set for release on June 27 via tak:til / Glitterbeat, the album draws deeply from folk ritual and Gaelic tradition while venturing confidently into more experimental terrain.
Chaimbeul’s mastery of drone is evident from the outset. Opener “Dùsgadh / Waking” unfolds slowly, its layered textures resembling a mist gradually lifting over the moorlands. Rather than rushing to melody, she lets the tonal weight settle, creating a sense of suspended time.
The album’s title feels fitting—each piece seems to follow a sunwise, or deiseal, arc, moving with reverence through cycles of sound and ritual. “A’ Chailleach”, a standout track, weaves her cyclical piping with haunting vocals, conjuring the mythic figure of the Cailleach with both delicacy and power.
Transitions are key throughout. “Interlude – Kindle the Fire” evokes a ceremonial call-and-response, its pipes flickering like sparks over a deep drone bed. That sense of community pulse continues in “She Went Astray.” Here, the small pipes adopt a more rhythmic gait, driven by a toe-tapping beat that brings traditional dance music into new alignment, layered vocals and rhythmic piping to evoke a sense of temporal disorientation. Chaimbeul says about the track: “This is an old vocal dance song I found from Miss Peigi MacRae of North Glendale (South Uist Island). It dates from 1934. This song is all about the rhythm of the language. In this track I wanted to embrace the slightly disorientating feeling that comes with two or three things happening at once!”
Elsewhere, “Bog an Lochan” balances a lively melodic thread with a subtle, almost imperceptible groove, while “Sguabag / The Sweeper” layers looping motifs into something hypnotic and almost orchestral in scale. Chaimbeul uses repetition not for stasis, but for transformation. It was recorded live with three other pipers.
The centerpiece, “Duan”, is a study in ritual. Its insistent pulse and cyclical pipes evolve into a sweeping cinematic swell, eventually dissolving into a whispered Gaelic monologue—an ending that feels like both invocation and release.
Closing track “The Rain Is Wine and the Stones Are Cheese” is brief but memorable, a drone and vocal fragment that reads like a lyrical footnote, or perhaps a riddle passed down across generations.
Throughout Sunwise, Chaimbeul’s pipes are not merely instruments—they are conduits. She plays not for spectacle but for atmosphere, summoning a sense of place that’s tactile, haunted, and wholly her own. This is folk music as landscape: stark, mysterious, and alive with echoes.
Since 2023, Chaimbeul has brought the small pipes to new audiences across Europe and the U.S., including a standout solo performance at the 2024 Supersonic Festival in Birmingham. Her growing influence has sparked renewed interest in the small pipes, once considered a fading tradition.
Brìghde Chaimbeul shared: “This record follows the embrace of winter time; the closing in of darkness, the cold, the pull to turn inward. But also, the customs of the season, and gathering for the ceilidh: songs and stories told round the fire; where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur.”
Release date: Friday, June 27th 2025
Buy Sunwise.
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.