Pekko Kappi / Alasdair Roberts / Gary West

Event information

www.tracertrails.co.uk
www.pekkokappi.com
www.alasdairroberts.com
www.garywest.co.uk

Another Braw Gigs/Tracer Trails bill caught in the weave of traditional and experimental musics. This time, Finnish jouhikko and Scottish smallpipes => a celebration of international revivalism, recontextualisation and transformation…

Pekko Kappi (Singing Knives) is a player of Jouhikko, the ancient Finnish-Karelian bowed horse-hair lyre. A member of the staggeringly psychedelic free jazz group Päivänsäde, Pekko makes brilliant use of this archaic instrument in all-improvised settings and traditional folk songs. His playing crosses bowed strings with soft locomotive rhythms, grainy drones and circling, buzzing patterns; otherwordly vocals chase the arc of his bow with beautiful melodies, mournful wails and low, zoned chants.

"Essentially, this is an album about artifice ... sketching out an alternative ethno-musical reality ... Whether real or imagined, it's still a seductive and rewarding place to spend half an hour." (The Wire)

Alasdair Roberts (Drag City) is Swabian-born, Kilmahog-bred alumnus of Appendix Out and single-handed re-reinventor of the Scots ballad tradition. He’s a recent Wire cover star, and has been hailed as ‘a genius’ in fRoots for his treatment of traditional tunes as well as for his songwriting, which, drawing on mythic motifs and ancient tunings, seems to reflect and distort the ballads he sings.

"Roberts fashions his songs from the stout timber of myth, and creates songs that, for all their haunting morbidity, throb with electricity." (The Independent)

Gary West (Greentrax), who will be playing a set on the Scottish smallpipes, performed for 18 years with the famous Vale of Atholl Pipe Band, winning both the Scottish and European Championships. In the late 1980s, he began to play a prominent role in the folk music scene, joining Ceolbeg in 1988, and becoming a founder member of the Scottish ‘supergroup’ Clan Alba in 1991, playing alongside such luminaries as Dick Gaughan and Brian McNeil. Gary is currently Head of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and presents the Radio Scotland piping programme Pipeline.