Scotland on Sunday Norman Chalmers
Fiddler's Bid harp/keyboard player and bowman take their long-term instrumental partnership to new levels in this celebration of music from the Northern Isles. But this is no suspended-in-aspic example of old-style Shetland music. These young musicians are rooted in their traditions, classically trained - and, more importantly, musically adventurous and inventive. New readings of ancient wedding marches, original compositions brimming with contemporary influence, reels spun with muscular virtuosity, and slow airs that bring salt to the eyes. A lesson in harp and fiddle playing, and a delight to the ear.
The Herald Rob Adams
Harper Catriona McKay and fiddlers Chris Stout have been working together for more than 10 years, during which they have developed individually and as a duo to the extent that, with McKay's nimble elegance and Stout’s stirring tone and masterful touch, they are operating at a rarefied level of expertise.
These nine tracks are all of high quality but, at seven minutes-plus each, the traditional Shetland selection, Smugglers, and the Romany-influenced Turns show just how naturally the pair sustain the invention and sense of enquiry that can completely reinvigorate old tunes and personalise newer ones, creating in the former case s mini-epic that blends craggy, elemental intensity with graceful eloquence while never losing sight of the music’s origins.
The Irish Times Siobhan Long
When Shetland reels pony up alongside Romany-tinged jazz confections, you're either tiptoeing in schizoid terrain or exposing your eardrums to musicians conversant with more than the dialect of home. McKay and Stout do for fiddle and harp what Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill have done for fiddle and guitar: stripping bare old tunes and not so much composing new ones as conjuring them from a divine concoction of tradition and bold imagination. Hangman's Reel epitomises the pair's downright boldness with its sensual, throaty fiddle lines redefining the shape of the tune, reminiscent of what De Danann did with Handel's music two decades ago. McKay's harp is deliciously angular and haughty, particularly on her original Spöndrift, as fluidly dispersed as the sea spray from which it borrows its title. Unimpeachable.
The Scotsman Sue Wilson
Harpist McKay and fiddler Stout have been promising this delightful duo album for some time now, and it is well worth the wait. They have evolved a refined approach to combining their instruments and updating the folk tradition on which they draw. It features Shetland repertoire old and new, jazz-inflected tunes by Fraser Fifield and Graeme Stephen, and an elegiac Irish tune by Michael Rooney.
Penguin Eggs Magazine (Canada) Roddy Campbell
Laebrack is the work of two Shetlanders, Chris Stout and harpist Catriona McKay. Both are involved in an impressively eclectic range of solo and group efforts, including Fiddlers’ Bid, but this is their first album together as a duo. And what an album! Always having been a bit lukewarm on the harp, Laebrack was a revelation to me! They spin out “hangman’s Reel” for almost five minutes, working up from a solo fiddle line to a gloriously fiery duo finish. They flirt with modernity and improvisation on Graeme Stephen’s “Turns” (both players are no stranger to electroacoustic and other experimental music.) And there’s no escaping traditional Shetland tunes, which crop up in several sets. Throughout, their sound is gutsy and wonderfully full, despite they’re being only the two players. Inspired!
Sing Out! Magazine Rob Weir
With the fabulous Shetlands band Fiddler's Bid you get two bands in one, as fiddler Chris Stout tours as a duo with harper, Catriona McKay. Whereas the ensemble is known for its heart-stopping energy, the duo takes an unhurried approach. Although Stout and McKay have the good sense to alternate slow and up-tempo selections, even the latter tend towards quiet elegance. This allows them to rework several familiar tunes in new ways. The famed Shetlands "Bride's March," for instance, is played even more slowly than is customary, and what they do with "Hangman's Reel" scarcely resembles what one usually hears. The latter has Scandinavian reverberations several dramatic harp cascades and passages in which McKay's harp keeps the melody intact whilst Stout adds trills and thrills. Still other unorthodox pieces include a cover of jazz guitarist Graeme Stephen's "Turns," which McKay and Stout flavor with gypsy and tango seasoning; and "Da Shaalds o Foula," whose old-style tunings evoke hardanger fiddle. Many of the album's selections, including the stately "Eileen's Lament," have a classical feel about them in that they are executed with great precision and delicacy, but they never contain stodgy, academic undertones. Laebrack is a Shetlands term for the surf, and this namesake album washes over listeners like a warm wave on a calm day.
Scots Magazine Alasdair Maclean
Harpist Catriona McKay and fiddler Chris Stout from Fiddlers’ Bid unite without the rest of the band for Laebrack, a moving and exhilarating collection of traditional and modern compositions, the former from Shetland, and bearing names from the Northern Isles – the title track refers to the surge of the surf, for instance.
The duo have performed together for over 10 years, and have evolved between them a rich and elegant style that does full justice to the traditions of Scotland’s most peripheral and most Norse communities.
Tracks celebrate the surf and other natural features, as well as the islands’ rich culture – the “Bride’s March” from Unst, for example, and “Shaalds O’ Foula”. Adventures even farther afield in geography are remembered in “End of the Line”, (when Catriona fell asleep on a train, says the sleeve; and farther afield musically in the jazz track “turns”. An exciting and beautifully crafted collection.
Netrhythms.com David Kidman
Harpist Catriona and fiddler Chris, two of the seven members of Shetland's amazing Fiddlers' Bid, have been performing regularly together outside the band context for nearly ten years, yet this is their first record as a duo. Laebrack is an apt title, for the duo "surf" the widest possible net of music for both their material and their inspirations, taking in classic Shetland, Scottish and Irish tunes and newly-penned material with equal eagerness, running the stylistic gamut from vibrant "old-style" trad to poignant lament, strict tempo to jazzy syncopation. You'll be amazed, as I was, at the sheer variety of textures and sounds that just those two instruments can engender; it may sound a contradiction in terms, but the musicians' unhurried virtuoso playing really does energise the listener - and not just on the faster pieces. The passionate, virtually classical tone and manner of Chris's fiddle and viola playing is marvellous, expertly controlled without ever becoming sterile, while Catriona's harp filigrees are so much more than the insubstantiality that word might at first suggest. If it's a demonstration of contrast that you seek, then to start with you need go no further than by selecting Hangman's Reel (track 2) and Eileen's Lament (track 9); the combination of delicacy of expression and devilish drive on the former is mesmerising, while the darker, more intense emotional outpourings of the latter are characterised memorably. Moving further on into the CD, other deliciously managed highlights include Catriona's own tune Spöndrift (evocative to the very letter!), a scintillating pair of identically-named Shetland tunes (Da Shaalds O Foula), and - possibly my own favourite of all - the delectably tricky (Balkan-influenced?) Turns (written by Aberdeen jazz guitarist Graeme Stephen). But there's so much more than contrast on offer here: light and shade, poise and grace, dexterity and precision of attack, intense versatility, flexibility within discipline (the hallmark of a good classically-trained musician) - all qualities which are in abundance here, against a backdrop of faultless empathy that the two musicians have clearly built over their years of playing together ever since student days. Aided by an equally faultless, clean recording, Catriona and Chris have been able to do no wrong with this sparkling release, which deserves your closest listening attention.
Fiddle On Magazine Stephen Wassel
Harp player Catriona McKay and fiddler Chris Stout have escaped from the Shetland band Fiddlers’ Bid to make an album together: harp and fiddle does seem to be a perfect combination of instruments. They start off quite laid back but by the second track, ‘Hangman’s Reel”, they’ve whipped up an incredible virtuosic frenzy. Chris sounds like he’s playing the fiddle with his fingernails at one point.
About half the tracks hare are traditional Shetland tunes, and a few of the rest are composed by the performers. Another of the tracks is a jazz tune by Graeme Stephen which Chris learnt while playing in his sextet, and indeed Chris’ playing in some of the other tracks is very jazz inspired with improvisation and varying tone colours. But he proves he can play traditionally too in that special Shetland way, particularly on the final track: a beautiful slow air by Michael Rooney ‘Eileen’s Lament’.
