Resonate Artist of the Week: Mairi Campbell
Pioneering folk musician and Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame inductee Mairi Campbell is this week’s Resonate Artist of the Week. Her forthcoming album Storm is out now on Holy Smokes Records. This album creates an amazingly intense atmosphere with soundscapes and otherworldy vocals, making you fell really part of Storm.
Mairi Campbell is a prolific figure in Scottish music and the recipient of six Scots Trad Music Awards, including the Inspiration Award in 2018. She has carved a career as an established member of Scotland’s traditional music scene, pushing the genre’s boundaries with her fearless experimentation.
Storm is the latest in a series of works with longtime collaborator Dave Gray, now seeing Campbell realising the voice and music of Storm - a ten-me-tre-tall goddess of the sea who walks the streets of cities across Scotland with grave warning of looming climate disaster.
The environmentally focussed Vision Mechanics puppet Storm has provided a perfect monolithic muse for Mairi’s music, with it’s launch at Celtic Connections 2020 attracting thousands. An intensely atmospheric Celtic fusion soundscape, Storm distils Scottish traditional musical disciplines and Campbell’s masterful viola with Gray’s experimental industrial and electronic adventurism. Delivered with Campbell’s otherworldly vocal, the record reflects the stormy waves of transition humanity finds itself in.
Storm is out now on Holy Smokes Records.