Symbiosis II

The Ant & Dec of the Scottish trad music scene, if only because they no longer need surnames, Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton met as 12-year-old recruits to the piping corps of the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band. There, their mentor was Gordon Duncan, the late piping genius, maverick tunesmith and a man who encouraged his charges to believe that anything they heard could be translated onto the Highland bagpipe. Twenty years on, these great pals don't have quite Duncan's compositional flair but they have taken on board his idea of pitching pipes in with whatever instruments come to hand and they use it here to build layers out of string arrangements, rumbly synth bass, electro beats and jangly cittern riffs into music that's by turns atmospheric, dramatic, beguiling and momentous.

Opener ‘Kings’ is a fine example, moving through moods, from ominous to optimistic, as whistles pass the melodic baton to pipes. ‘Mink’ showcases their wonderfully fluent piping with an exhilarating change of pace and their restrained treatment of Tommy Peoples' ‘Beautiful Goretree’ confirms their appreciation of a simply expressed tune.