breakfast in balquhidder cd

Reviews of Breakfast In Balquhidder, from The Financial Times, Scotland On Sunday, The Living Tradition, EdinburghGuide.com, The Guardian:

The Financial Times
"Colin Blakey has assembled a bevy of musicians from across the world, including his fellow ex-Waterboy Steve Wickham, for a set of tunes recorded on Easdale Island in Argyll. Bagpipes and Uillean pipes abound, but things are warmed up by Blakey's swinging piano and by Philippa Bull's disciplined drumming. Best bits are 'Auga', where Blakey's stepping piano and Bull's loping reggae rhythms are joined by a clarinet solo from Ron Blakey, halfway between lament and Klezmer; and the dense title track, led by Kim Ho Ip's hammered dulcimer. Warm winter night music." [David Honigmann, 27/11/04]

Scotland On Sunday
"From car-free but music-rich Easdale Island in Argyll, this collective (including Waterboy Steve Wickham) is formed round ex-Waterboy Colin Blakey, his wife [sic] Phil Bull and bass player Steve Brown and is evolving a hybrid of Scottish, European, Latin and even Oriental sounds. The eclectic, all-instrumental album's 12 tracks are Blakey compositions, shot through with joyful melody, often on various mouth and bellows-blown bagpipes - and if the drums could do with a spanner here and there, Phil's beautiful string playing, with hammered dulcimer player Kim Ho Ip, opens the kitchen door to the massive intoxicating sound of the eponymous 'Breakfast' - a wake-up call to the dead." [Norman Chalmers, 25/10/04]

The Living Tradition
"When an Englishman (OK, I confess!) receives a CD that proudly bears the words 'WARNING: This product may contain traces of Bagpipes!' you will forgive me for approaching it with some trepidation. Needlessly, as it turned out. Orchestra Macaroon are a musical collective comprising Colin Blakey (Ex Waterboys), Phil Bull and Steve 'Wee' Brown (both Ex 'Gila Monster'), together with a cohort of other musicians whose names were mostly new to me. 'Breakfast in Balquhidder' was recorded at Colin's studio on Easdale Island, Argyll and comprises 12 tracks that bring together the aforementioned pipes (of all kinds) with a variety of Jazz and World Musical instruments and influences to create wonderful music that defies labelling and doesn't need it anyway. A track called 'Sun in the Eyes' deserves special mention (Salsa Bagpipes, no less! No, Really!) and the title track has a marvellous flavour of the orient to my ears. Quite simply some of the best Roots music I have heard in ages. You can find out more on a very good website at www.theshipbuilders.com... do it now." [Phil Thomas, Jan/Feb 05]

EdinburghGuide.com
"Orchestra Macaroon was formed in 2004 and played its first gig in Easdale Island's new village hall on Saturday July 24 to a full-to-overflowing audience. What an experience it must have been! Nine band members from as far apart as Ireland and China playing a dazzling variety of exotic and home-grown instruments, not all of which the vast majority of us could possibly name, never mind guess the sounds they'd make.

The band is the brainchild of the globe-trotting Colin Blakey, who first set off to Spain in 1983 and to Shetland in the following year. From then till now he has soaked up a whole music catalogue of instruments and sounds and amassed an impressive CV of musicianship ranging from classical flute and piano, The Waterboys in 1988 Edinburgh, the founding of the Drogheda Samba School on Ireland's County Louth in 1992 (samba? In Ireland??), writing the film score for a short film, The Hare, in 2002, to playing in a ceilidh band, The Ceilidh Bandidos, whose name tells you a lot about Blakey the man.

He's an inveterate gatherer of traditional music, from the Celtic variety to all the rest of the world. One of the biggest impressions driving this World Music passion, is his involvement with that wonderful outpouring of the Indian subcontinent's rich, glittering tapestry of culture, Edinburgh's Mela, starting in 1997. So why is all this important?

Because Orchestra Macaroon defies classification into any genre or type and this is their debut album. It's a glorious fusion of sounds and musics, though the track titles don't give any hint of that at all.

Take the first number for instance: Arriving in Oban is a sound picture of the train journey from Glasgow to Oban - a very swinging, Glaswegian funky sound of hurrying drums underpinning joyous rollicking pipes, full of anticipation and excitement at this journey which ends with a flourish of blues horn and piano. Foot tapping, upbeat, excited fidgeting. The next number's rumba tempo neatly follows on with the same excitement and verve.

Just when you decide that this is what Orchestra Macaroon's all about: GREAT dancing music, intriguing sounds, pipes galore, new-style ceilidhs and so on, along comes Auga and suddenly we're into soulful pipes and clarinet, followed by the jig-time Irish Sea. When the title track, Breakfast in Balquhidder, arrives we're willingly off into yet another fusion ceilidh, led into by a strange, exotic 'lament cum soul' combination of cello and yang qin (a Chinese dulcimer).

All in all, this is wonderfully infectious music; music to dance to, to listen to in the quieter breath-catching moments before going off again into ceilidh mode. Music full of intriguing, can't-put-your-finger-on sounds from instruments you sometimes can't put a name to but which all work marvellously well together. All down to Colin Blakey's amazingly acute ear for sounds, musics, and above all, musicians, I suspect." [Pat Napier, 17/01/05]

"The Guardian
Warning: may contain bagpipes -
Orchestra Macaroon have mixed conga, piano, sea samples and pipes. Somehow it works

The cover of Kuljit Bhamra's Burning at Melting Point (Keda, £9.99) could be spotted on the front of last week's Friday Review - just one CD among the torrent of albums that music reviewers deal with each week. Where do you start? It's useful when the packaging provides a clue to the contents, but Bhamra's artwork - the percussionist's walking stick encased in a block of ice - isn't much help. A line on the back promises, "A rich fusion of east and west to chill your mind," which sounds like something you might order from a juice bar.

I prefer blunt statements like the one on Breakfast in Balquhidder (Backshore, £14.99) by Orchestra Macaroon: "WARNING: This product may contain traces of bagpipes." Brilliant. Just the sort of information you need when sorting through a tottering pile of CDs. Rodrigo y Gabriela's Live Manchester and Dublin (Rubyworks, £10.99) could justifiably claim "traces of heavy metal". Their Mexican-Flamenco guitar duo repertoire includes a cover of Metallica's One that moves into Paul Desmond's Take Five, with a snatch of the White Stripes. There's a wild streak to these recordings I've not heard in previous performances by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and it's very welcome. This is a World Music album that swings.

To The Stars (Stretch, £13.99) by the un-swinging virtuosi of the Chick Corea Elektric Band, cries out for warning stickers - "this album contains dangerously high levels of Scientology". Based on the sci-fi novel by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, it's a concept album that drags some perfectly fine jazz musicians (including John Patitucci and Eric Marienthal) through conceptual purgatory.

Baila! Gitano Baila! (Tzadik, £14.99) by Septeto Rodriguez, contains traces of just about everything except bagpipes, and is certainly the only Jewish-Cuban-Gypsy fusion CD in my collection. Rodriguez is one of those super-drummers who's played with everyone from Miami Sound Machine to Lester Bowie (via Joe Jackson and Julio Iglesias). He drummed in Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos (Prosthetic Cubans), and his Septeto has some of Ribot's groovy insouciance. Yet the timbres are different: accordion, clarinet, string trio and trombone, plus Brad Jones on bass. The title track exemplifies Rodriguez's method - a killer clave set against a sneaking bass and impassioned melodies for brass and strings, like music from a tradition that's never been heard before.

Drummer/percussionists often make good bandleaders and producers, but find solo albums more of a challenge. Rodriguez makes music so specialised he can be number one in a field of one; Bhamra drums expertly with a diverse set of collaborators. Bhamra's Burning at Melting Point contains odd traces of Julian Clary (think camp Indo-Kraftwerk) and Barb Jungr (30 seconds of blues harmonica). Level 42's Mike Lindup, Chapman Stick player Nick Beggs, guitarist Edward Niebla and Brit-jazz maestro Michael Garrick also appear. Oh, and Steafan Hannigan plays Irish pipes on a couple of tracks.

And, by the way, that pipes warning on Breakfast in Balquhidder was misleading since the whole album is full of them - Hispanic gaitas as well as Uilleann, Highland and Border pipes. Admittedly, they're juxtaposed with congas, piano, flugelhorn, Yang Qin, and sea samples (Bhamra uses these too) plus rhythmic experimentation, but it's a seriously bagpipe-driven 53 minutes. And as unlikely fusions go, it really works." [John L Walters, 29/10/04]