Like the titular whirlpool of their second album , Hand Of Kalliach’s rush of and Gaelic folk music will pull you under a vortex of powerful guitars and ethereal siren songs. The Edinburgh-based husband-and-wife duo weave tales around ancient myths and legends as grand as their Scottish homeland. “It was a wild and weird project that we wanted to do just for us,” guitarist and vocalist John Fraser says.
“Something to really escape and break up the monotony [of the pandemic lockdowns].” John and his wife, co-vocalist Sophie Fraser, have three young children and have led a quiet life in the nine years they’ve been married. Never in their wildest dreams would they have thought they’d be releasing music together, let alone sign to a record label.
“I got asked in an interview how I feel about being a musician,” Sophie says. “I don’t think I’d actually realised that I a musician. It’s just very strange to think of myself like that.
I’m a very accidental musician.” Stuck at home in 2020, the Frasers fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of Scottish folklore, tinkering with putting those stories against an undertow of and amplified with melodies of traditional Gaelic music. “We’d talked about doing something for a while with a Celtic vein that had a very different interpretation of folk,” John says.
“Obviously at the moment you've got a lot of popularity of Nordic mythology, but there's as much on the Scottish mythology side of things that nobody kno.
