Orchestra Macaroon
- Breakfast
In Balquhidder
Backshore Productions
BKSH-CD01
Running time: 53:22 mins
Personnel
Colin Blakey (piano, gaita, guitar); Philippa Bull (drums,
cello, violin); Steve 'Wee' Brown (double bass); Patrick
Martin (highland & uillean pipes); Stephen McNally
(border pipes); Steve Wickham (violin); Lorne Cowieson
(flugelhorn); Ron Blakey (clarinet); Kim Ho Ip (yang
qin); Kieran Gallagher (percussion & berimbau).
Breakfast
In Balquhidder is the debut album from Colin Blakey's Orchestra
Macaroon. Recorded on Easdale Island in Argyll, the session combines
the emotional thrill of Gaelic music with the sort of deep loping
grooves more usually associated with a certain Caribbean island (think
Ernie Ranglin).
Fusion
rarely sounded so different yet so right. All 12 highly rhythmic pieces
were written by former Waterboy Colin Blakey for the core band of
piano, bass and drums. Arranged to showcase the distinctive sound
of pipes (Irish and Scots as well as Spanish gaita), fiddle and flugelhorn,
the result is exhilarating and intoxicating in equal measure.
This
is no extended jam session, however. Each of the 12 hook-filled tunes
has its own distinctive, hummable identity. All are performed with
verve and breathtaking panache. Put simply, Breakfast In Balquhidder
is memorable music for the head and the feet.
Here's a selection:
1 - Inspired by the train journey from Glasgow to the West coast of
Scotland, Arriving In Oban rolls out of the station
on funky drums with highland pipes declaiming from the windows. A
shower of blue notes from horn and piano signal the arrival home.
2 - Sun In The Eyes, originally called The Mayo Maracatu,
is a sparkling Latin rumba whose catchy piano vamp is intensified
by the searing chromaticism of the gaita.
3 - Bubbling bass against a background of deep drone creates a dramatic
tension on The Old Dispensary that is joyfully released
by high flying, chorus swapping pipes.
4 - Auga has an Augustus Pablo/Studio One roots feel
with a clarinet topline lending a wistful, soulful atmosphere.
5 - The title track, Breakfast In Balquhidder, opens
with a melancholic preamble from cello and yang qin - before leading
the ensemble into an exultant ceilidh-style celebration of Sino-gaelic
relations.
6 - Hall Farm Blues is a highstepping tune straight
out of Orange Street that winds down to a perfectly judged 'version'
finish with congas and elder claves.
7 - In Low Tide the sound of Easdale's rippling backshore
is the transcendental backdrop to Patrick Martin's evocative low whistle.
That the essentially Gaelic piece opens to the gentle twang of a Brazilian
berimbau seems entirely fitting.
The
Breakfast In Balquhidder project works because of the
deep musical empathy shared by the band's members. Orchestra
Macaroon emerged from a rhythm-propelled trio led by Colin
Blakey (piano and gaita) along with Philippa Bull (drums and fiddles)
and Steve "Wee" Brown (double bass). The addition of an
international cast of soloists that includes violinist Steve Wickham,
flugelhorn player Lorne Cowieson and Chinese yang qin virtuoso Kim
Ho Ip, created a sound that is bigger than the sum of its parts.
With
such a diverse line-up, making the arrangements work was a real challenge.
Different
pipes play in different keys. The Gaita Galega is in C; the Scottish
Highland pipes are in Bb; the Scottish border pipes are in G, and
the Irish Uillean pipes are in D. But they all read differently too,
as though they are transposing instruments of different kinds. "So
even if you can work out parts for them all to play in a score in
concert-pitch, you then have the challenge of rendering the individual
parts in a way that makes sense to the players," Blakey explains.
"I've worked out a way of doing that, with the help of a scoring
software package's 'transpose' function."
There's
art as well as craft in the composing, however. "Sometimes
it's interesting to use, say the drone of the Gaita (which is in C)
with the Border Pipes (in G), but have him play in 'C tonic' - in
other words combine the drones of one pipe with the chanter of another,"
Blakey says. "I also asked the players to do things they wouldn't
normally do with their pipes, like getting the border pipes to play
in F, which is possible, but seldom done."
The
piece on the album that exploits all these clever tricks to the full
is 'The Old Dispensary'. "I composed the opening
riff by identifying the three notes common to all four sets of pipes.
The drones all add up to an amazing fat chord underneath - something
like a G minor sus 4 - I then got each pipe to play the same tune
in all the different keys possible, with different harmonies and accompaniments
and drone regimes," Blakey says. The piece ends with a tonal
rendering by all the pipes of a Brazilian Ijexa rhythm - the same
groove that the conga drums play through the piece.
The
other instruments, such as the yang qin, all have their own foibles
and idiosyncrasies, and Blakey's arrangements succeed by making a
virtue out of their limitations.
But
the beauty of Breakfast in Balquhidder is that it does
not come over as a technical triumph; it swings like crazy. "I
like the idea of minimalism - less is always more. The problem I hear
with a lot of music is that there is not enough room left for the
listener to use their own musical imagination," Blakey says.
"When every corner of every beat and groove is covered and
exploited, there's no space left inside the music."
