Face the West - Teine

In retrospect, it’s odd that it took so long for people to spot how much Celtic traditional music has in common with electronic dance music (the clue is in the word “dance”). Over the few decades, a host of fantastic Scottish artists (Elephant Sessions, Talisk, Valtos, the late lamented Niteworks) have been working out ever more imaginative ways of pairing reels and strathspeys with synths and electronic beats.

On their new album, Teine (their first since 2012’s The Young Fear Nothing), the brilliant Stornoway dance band Face the West push the boat out even further than their electro-trad Glaswegian peers. It’s an utterly lovable and infectious album, with some of the best dance tunes of the year.

Check out, for instance, their astonishing arrangement of the Phil Cunningham reel Hogtie’s. I doubt Cunningham imagined his tune with Kraftwerk vocoder, euphoric house-style piano and huge slabs of glittering synth lifted straight from 90s stadium dance band Utah Saints, but it totally works.

Likewise, the magnificently bonkers The Long Night to New Orleans takes a storming pipe tune by the French composer Tangi-Oscar Josset (brilliantly played by Euan McNab) and sets it to a bass-heavy eighties arcade game soundtrack from keyboard and synth player Keith Morrison.

There are also plenty of straight-up trad tunes for those of a less eclectic disposition. Claire Mann’s lovely jig Obsessive Island gets a particularly delicate reworking, splashed with broad washes of cymbals from drummer DC Macmillan. But the undisputed highlight of this stunning album is their reimagining of the traditional slip jig Would the Minister Not Dance?.

Led by Alasdair White and Jane Hepburn’s charging fiddles, punctuated with enormous crashes of distorted guitar and a gloriously crisp synth countermelody, it’s a perfect fusion of ancient and modern, and a festival floor-filler in the making. Book your tickets to HebCelt 2025 now!