Chicane feat. Máire Brennan — Saltwater

Nick Bracegirdle folds Máire Brennan's Clannad vocal into an oceanic groove and produces something that sounds like an entire Ibizan summer collapsed into eight minutes. Saltwater is the record where classic trance discovered its softer, coastal register — the one that made Café Mambo sunset sets unreasonably powerful.

Bracegirdle had built his Chicane project around Balearic guitar textures — 'Offshore' in 1996 had already established the template. For 'Saltwater' he wanted a vocal that carried the same coastal melancholy; he licensed the Clannad sample directly from Máire Brennan after playing 'Offshore' down the phone to convince her. The record was written and produced entirely in Bracegirdle's Buckinghamshire home studio in autumn 1998.

The rolling arpeggio is a Roland JP-8000 lead pitched down an octave and run through a TC Electronic reverb, sitting at 133 BPM — slower than most trance of the period, closer to progressive house. The Máire Brennan vocal is sampled Gaelic (from Clannad's 1982 'Theme From Harry's Game'), pitched up two semitones, and layered over a Fender Rhodes-style pad. The Tomski Remix on the flip is faster and harder; the original mix is the definitive.

Reached #6 on the UK Singles Chart in April 1999 and became the record most closely associated with Café Mambo's sunset sets for the entire summer of 1999. José Padilla played it seven nights a week at Café del Mar Ibiza throughout June-August. Mixmag's Album of the Month editorial in July 1999 called it 'the record that finally lets British trance feel Mediterranean.'

• UK Singles Chart#6
• Irish Singles Chart#3
• German Dance Chart#12

• 1:15Máire Brennan's vocal enters.
• 3:40Full breakdown to pad and vocal only.
• 5:20The arpeggio returns transposed up a fifth.

• Original Mix (1999)

  The 8:12 Café Mambo standard.

• Tomski Remix (1999)

  Harder, more peak-time.

• Above & Beyond Remix (2001)

  Uplifting rework for the Behind The Sun album reissue.

• Chicane 2020 Rework

  21st anniversary; extended intro for DJ use.

'Saltwater' effectively legitimised 'Balearic trance' as a distinct subgenre and made Chicane a fixture of every sunset compilation for the next decade. Bracegirdle's follow-up 'No Ordinary Morning' (2000) and 'Don't Give Up' (with Bryan Adams, 2000) both traced the same template. Máire Brennan remains uncredited on some pressings due to a licensing snag with Clannad's original label RCA.

• Máire Brennan reportedly signed off the sample license after Bracegirdle sent her a handwritten letter explaining what the song meant to him.
• The record's cover art was shot at Cala Comte beach in Ibiza during the September 1998 sunset.
• Chicane closed Cream Amnesia with 'Saltwater' every Thursday for the summer 1999 season.