Marriage a la mode

The fan and I are an old fashioned couple in many ways...and bang up to date in others. It's not unusual for him to call out from the room where he is sitting at the PC that he has sent me an email, which I will then look at on my Galaxy.

Thankfully these emails aren't asking me if I'd like a cup of tea, have remembered to wash some shirts, or have had a good day: there are limits to our modernity. Generally they are links to a video, a review, a blog post or an article. Ages ago we'd had ongoing discussons about anthropology and ethnology, what they were, where they came from, what they covered, and what their academic value or standing might be. The fan went away, did some further reading, and emailed me a pile of links which, what with one thing and another, I just didn't get around to looking at until a week or two back.

In amongst the pile was an email with a link to details of a new CD: Highland Strands by Kevin Macleod. I at once trundled off to buy it (a bit of a challenge in itself: I don't know if they didn't press many copies or just sold out. Thankfully Coda could supply a copy.)

My copy arrived today and is well worth the effort to get hold of it. Kevin again plays a range of tunes, mostly Scottish, mostly pipe tunes, all on a range of stringed instruments. He returns to the Seaforth Highlanders for Fingals Weeping and The Women of the Glen, but also uses David Glen's 1882 collection. Retreats, marches, quicksteps and reels all get the string treatment, and I actually don't once regret the lack of pipes. I enjoy hearing pipe tunes from a different angle, as it were. It sheds new light on them and brings out the best in the strings.

There are new tunes, too, including some by Ian Hardie, Freeland Barbour and Allan MacDonald, among others. Kevin is also joined by other, mostly stringy, players: Freeland, John Martin of Ossian fame and Matheu Watson, to name but three, and Phil Smillie on flute. The, as ever, informative sleeve notes, include a picture of Kevin, John and Alec Finn playing at Sandy Bells two years ago. The fan, who once played there himself, looked upon this with awe and wondered how it would be to pop in for a wee dram and come across this trio. A wee dram and some of this music...a marriage made in Heaven, surely.

I ordered another Whistlebinkies album at the same time, and am giving that a first listen through as I type. It's unmistakably Whistlebinkies and sounding good so far.