Brìghde Chaimbeul, Round Chapel review - enchantment in East London

Hackney’s Round Chapel is an appropriate venue. Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul opens her set with “Dùsgadh/Waking.” It has the spirit of a call to prayer: the directness, the insistence, the magnetic quality. All of which draws in anyone exposed to its power. It enchants.

As well as beginning this sell-out appearance at the multi-use, horseshoe-footprint nonconformist East London church which opened in 1871, “Dùsgadh/Waking” is the first track on Chaimbeul’s recent album Sunwise. Completing the trio of firsts, this is the opening date on what is billed as the ‘Sunwise’ Tour.

The hour-long set is tremendously forceful

Sunwise is Chaimbeul’s – her name is pronounced Bree-chu Chaym-bul – third solo album. Although she is rooted in and draws from traditional music, one of her internet presences describes her as a “purveyor of experimental Celtic music.” And, as this show emphasises, tagging her music and approach to it as one thing or another is a mug’s game. Fluidity – an indefiniteness – is key.

Mostly sticking with what’s on Sunwise, the hour-long set is tremendously forceful. Chaimbeul’s concentration on her playing complements – or generates – this. “A' Chailleach” follows “Dùsgadh/Waking.” On the album, maverick saxophonist Colin Stetson guests on the track. He is not here and is not missed but she is joined on stage by the Brooklyn-based Marc Ribot associate Shahzad Ismaily, who is on a chair with a Moog synthesiser perched on his knees. His contributions are subtle: a sound wash akin to the hum of the wind as it passes through overhead cables, the occasional loop-like arpeggio. Chaimbeul is the focus.

Her drone-bedded music might be glacial, but instead – especially in the live setting – it seethes, like slowly bubbling lava. The pulse running through “She Went Astray” is as unyielding as waves crashing onto a shore during a storm.

Brìghde Chaimbeul gives little away

After “A' Chailleach,” the flow is suspended for five minutes. She suddenly says “I want to tell you story.” A tale is, indeed, told. A creepy one of a baby replaced by a changeling (the eanabh sithe or bodach sith). Familiar elements from such stories are present – the faery hill (the sithean), an episode of enchantment. Chaimbeul does not reveal if she wrote this, whether it’s a family tale that has been passed down or one specific to a particular place.

In person, she gives little away. Only a couple of titles are announced. There are thanks to those involved in the show, and to Ismaily, but the only overt acknowledgement of her relation to this music comes in the wake of “Duan” when she notes the potency of reciting lines which her father spoke during the Sunwise recording of the Hogmanay related composition. Otherwise, there is a fleeting hint of diffidence: after speaking about “Duan” she says “anyway, we’re going to carry on with something else.” It’s doubtless off the cuff, but it is as if her previous comment was too revealing so should be disregarded. Seemingly, she is more comfortable with being this-close to enigmatic. It's enough to be here.

This impressive performance further confirms what Sunwise indicated: that Brìghde Chaimbeul occupies her own space. Her music accommodates fellow individualists Colin Stetson and Shahzad Ismaily. She has a collaboration with singular guitarist Fred Frith on the horizon. At times – especially during the pre-encore set closer “Bog an Lochan” – what springs to mind is a familial relationship with the Brian Eno and Robert Fripp of No Pussyfooting. “Experimental Celtic music” it is then. With a dash of creepiness and a whole lot of intensity. There is no reason to doubt that the ensuing dates on this tour will be similarly potent.

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