At last a solo album from Mike Katz. Since 1997 he has made lots of CDs with the Battlefield Band but not had time to make one of his own.

Mike Katz writes: Approximately thirteen years ago the piper and scholar Allan MacDonald gave me two cassette recordings of himself playing, on the practice chanter, all of the tunes contained in two volumes of pipe music, which were at that time out of print. Angus Mackay's Piper's Assistant (1843) and Gunn's Collection of Music (1848). This body of some 300 tunes was a revelation to me for though contained within it were many tunes familiar to the modern repertiore - all be the older versions with unfamiliar ornamentaition - there were also dozens of tunes which I had never heard before. The melodic and rhythmic style of these old tunes sounded completely new to me in the context of pipe music: it was as if the fashion of playing light music (music that is not piobaireachd) had changed substantially sometime early in the 20th century. In itself this holds some scholarly interest but more importantly it served as an enormous inspiration to compose tunes. On this recording I play many of these old tunes as well as my own compositions written since these books opened my thinking to this older style of tunes. In my mind these are interesting tunes of great energy and it is that energy which draws me to this kind of music regardless of the instrument.

On this album, Mike plays the Highland Bagpipes (the big pipes), the sweet 'small pipes' and various whistles, plus bass guitar and has also been joined by various friends: renowned jazz guitarist Kevin MacKenzie (recent winner of a Creative Scotland Award); Tannahill Weaver's fiddler John Martin; concertina mainman Simon Thoumire and of course his Battlefield Band colleague Alasdair White, also on fiddle.