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The Pioneer

from The Woods by Hamish Napier

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Almost a double-album at 1 hour 6 minutes!

    If you preorder the CD you get BOTH the CD and the digital album download.

    The CD also comes in a truly stunning 3-fold digipack (6 pages), containing:
    - an epic 28-page, 6000-word booklet with native tree facts & Highland folklore
    - a beautifully detailed drawing of the Caledonian forest by Somhairle MacDonald
    - stunning landscape photography by David Russell at Highland Wildscapes.
    - you INSTANTLY receive one album track download: Track 9: "Forest Folk"

    ....all in all: you get an album, a piece of art and a tree book!

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Woods via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.     ... more
    ships out within 3 days

      £18 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

For letter 'B' of the Scottish Gaelic tree alphabet.

B is for 'BEITH' [Beh], birch, birk.

- Silver birch, beith-dhubhach, Betula pendula.
- Downy birch, beith-chlùmhach, Betula pubescens.
- Dwarf birch, beith-bheag, betula nana.

A slow air for the beautiful birch.

‘B’ is the first letter of the Early Medieval alphabet (the Ogham) which is very apt since it was one of the pioneering species to spread across the barren post ice age landscape 10 millennia ago.

Their leaves are among the first to appear in spring. A birch wood in a summer sunset can turn an incredible fluorescent green. The lush drooping green canopies turn yellow-gold in autumn and leave behind a purple-brown crown of bare branches in winter.

How do you tell the difference between silver bich and downy birch? Silver birch has a straighter trunk with brilliant black and white bark and more triangular leaves, while downy birch trunks are less ordered and smaller with slightly browner bark and more rounded leaves.

Birch is plentiful in the Highlands and so was put it to a myriad of uses by the Highlanders of old: firewood, arrows, spinning wheels, rope, candles, sap wine and fodder for livestock.

credits

from The Woods, track released January 9, 2020
Musicians:

HN: F bamboo flute, piano
IW: fiddle, strings
SL: cello
JH: uilleann pipes
JL: bass
SB: guitar, drums
Woodpecker, swifts, chaffinches: vocals

All tracks composed by H Napier PRS/MCPS.

Produced by Andrea Gobbi & H Napier.

Arranged by S Byrnes & H Napier.

Recorded, mixed & mastered by A Gobbi at GloWorm Recordings & Carrier Waves, Glasgow.

Additional recordings by Barry Reid on location in Hamish’s livingroom, Grantown-on-Spey.

Field recordings by H Napier, W Boyd-Wallis and P Smith.

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about

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Hamish Napier Grantown On Spey, UK

Hamish is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from the Scottish Highlands.

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