Brian McAlpine
Mutual Imagination Society
Own label
Brian McAlpine has been a familiar figure on the traditional music scene in Scotland for more than 25 years, as often as not in a supportive role, lending his accordion and keyboards strengths to groups including Session A9 and the Pearlfishers. Now, having contributed to dozens of albums, he is bringing his own voice as a composer to the fore with this impressive collection.
The desire here was to paint pictures with sound and McAlpine does that convincingly, creating variously ominous, grand and plaintive pieces that evoke the Scottish landscape and climate, both social and meteorological. He’s a deep thinker who can use music as a healing force – his meditative Soundtrack to Peace could equally be personal or global - but also as a means of celebrating joy, big occasions and the urge to dance.
To his own instruments he has added multi-tracked strings, fat horn arrangements, a bagpiping quintet and vocals, with the great Nigel Hitchcock adding saxophone on The Tumbler. Essing has the feeling of a Philly soul ballad and Blue Grass, from its lowering, imposing beginnings, moves into the uplifting, carefree country style hinted at in its title.
Rob Adams
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here