The Brothers Gillespie (siblings James and Sam Gillespie) are still something of a secret on the UK music scene and yet they have a dedicated following all over the land. Their music, with its soaring harmony, fingerstyle guitar and the increasingly diverse sonic textures evident on their new record Kingfisher, is distinctive for its spiritual heart and radical edge.

They draw inspiration from many currents, including their traditional roots, lineages of romantic and mystical poets and time spent wandering the land, sleeping out in all weathers. They are modern bards with a wild muse. As filmmaker Eamon Bourke puts it: 

‘Sam and James sing to the spirit of these times. In an amnesiac culture so scornful and afraid of magic, The Brothers Gillespie sing spells of remembering. There’s a defiance in their music that exists everywhere in nature and nowhere in the algorithm. A defiance that says we are here to love and be loved in return… they invite you into the ceremony of this life’. 

The Brothers Gillespie’s new album Kingfisher is a collection of songs borne of deepening into life and its terrain of love, loss, grief and longing. These are songs dreamed into being on the banks of two rivers of the northern borderlands, the Tweed and Tyne, and are suffused with riverine life, light and image. The album is a song to the old ways, to the quiet wisdoms of the wild, a rallying call to the praise makers. 

Kingfisher was recorded in June 2026 in rural Wiltshire with producer/recording engineer Gus White and a cast of brilliant Scotland-based musicians including Jen Hill, Tim Lane and Nick Jenkins. Kingfisher captures the festive energy of a band coming together with just the right producer, a joyful meeting of comrades. The recordings are based around live performances and contain the sound of the room, laughter, occasional birdsong and the wind through the trees, and were recorded using vintage microphones and instruments over ten bright and intense June days. The use of tape and analogue equipment during the mixing process steeps the album in a vintage warmth and intimacy that perfectly suits the music.

‘Our music is inspired by the still wild soul of the land in which we live, a land alive with presences, not owned by anyone. It is about seeing with the eye of the heart and recovering our imaginations. It is about finding home, belonging and each other in a world which is singing to us as we sing to it’ (The Brothers Gillespie)