Dreich weather fails to put a damper on spirited festival
0 Johnny Lynch’s band Pictish Trail were a highlight as ever
renowned this year for his buoyant showmanship and a sublime cross-cutting of contemporary club music with euphoric blasts from disco’s past like, in this case, the Emotions’ You’ve Got the Best of My Love and D’train’s You’re the One For Me.
After a clubby Friday, Saturday’s bill was more familiar from past Skye Lives, an eclectic but enjoyably area-specific blend of young traditional groups, electronic artists and leftfield indie-pop artists. As with the DJS chosen the previous day, the gender balance among the trad selections was
positive, with the excellent young all-female groups Heisk and the Kinnaris Quintet sharing the bill with the lively and well-established Session A9, and the group whose reaction marked them out as de facto headliners; the Skyebased Niteworks, an innovative and thrilling blend of raw club electronica and pipe band drums and bagpipes.
Raising an extra cheer for declaring themselves “from the Isle of Eigg”, near-neighbour Johnny Lynch’s band Pictish Trail were a highlight as ever, although perhaps not as decisive a one as last year’s headliners Django Django, whose quirky electronic pop they resemble. Taking advantage of the new 2am curfew, Leeds’ Vessels closed with an energising set of live electro, although earlier in the day the Tower Stage’s Mac-talla Nan Creag – an evocative assembly of electronic beats, archaeological recordings and Drew ‘Wounded Knee’ Wright’s drone-like vocal, led by Edinburgh’s Firecracker Recordings – was perhaps the defining example of Skye Live’s spirit of island and mainland cultural collaboration.
DAVID POLLOCK