ASSYNT is without doubt one of Scotland’s natural beauties. A lunar landscape of ancient rocks punctuated only by the dramatic hills that rise high above the moorland and the distant noise of the Atlantic crashing on to the beaches and cliffs along the shore.

It is an area of such outstanding beauty that it has proven an inspiration for writers and musicians for generations. It is also home to the first buyout in Scotland, when, 25 years ago, the Assynt crofters took control of the North Assynt estate, heralding a new era in land ownership in the Highlands.

However, despite this storied history, it is neither the beauty of the place nor its pioneering land reform that inspired the trio of Graham Mackenzie, David Shedden and Innes White to name their band Assynt. Instead it was an old pipe tune.

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“Innes’s grandfather was from Assynt, and there’s also a famous pipe tune called John Morrison of Assynt House and we just kind of liked the name,” explains piper Shedden.

While the trio’s debut album, Road To The North, is released next month, they have been playing together for several years but only recently found their name and began to work on that album.

“We’ve been playing together for a while but we didn’t really have a name or a band so we weren’t really a proper thing,” says Shedden. “But then we kind of got our act together and now we’re excited to get out and about playing our music.”

And that music is a joy. The tunes on Road To The North, all bar one of which were penned by the band, are a delight while Shedden’s pipes and Mackenzie’s fiddle are led to stunning effect by White’s guitars and mandolin. It is clear from the album that the trio are comfortable with each other’s talent.

“I did the Scottish music course at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire and that’s where I met Graham,” says Shedden. “Graham had studied at the Royal Northern Conservatoire in Manchester and then he came up to do a masters in Glasgow where I met him.

“Innes didn’t do the course but we met him through friends of friends and began playing together.”

With Glasgow being the focal point of Scottish traditional music, thanks largely to the Royal Scottish Conservatoire and Celtic Connections, meeting like-minded musicians has never been easier.

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“Everyone migrates to Glasgow now,” says Shedden, himself a Glaswegian. “You just meet so many people through the courses and it’s been great for me.”

Shedden, whose father is a piper, began on the pipes as a youngster and came through the pipe band system but only really began listening to traditional folk music after he started his degree course at the Conservatoire.

“I began playing pipes through my dad,” Shedden says. “He was a really good solo competition piper so I started doing that and then playing in pipe bands.

“I only really got into listening to folk music and playing with other people when I began the course. I don’t think I’d be doing what I do now if it hadn’t been for the Conservatoire.

“The first folk band I ever heard was Flook [the Irish trailblazers who feature Brian Finnegan on the whistle]. Flook played a lot of [legendary piper] Gordon Duncan’s tunes and it was the first time I’d heard these tunes being played on anything other than bagpipes so that was very different for me.

“I then decided I wanted to learn the whistle as I just thought Brian Finnegan was amazing. So I bought a really cheap whistle and sat down for 10 minutes and couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It wasn’t until I was at the Conservatoire that I started playing whistle properly.

“It still feels quite weird for me to be employed as a whistle player and to turn up to gigs with no pipes, only whistles.”

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Shedden’s late introduction to whistle is never evident on Road To The North and his playing is beautifully nuanced as the music sweeps the listener onward on their journey north.

Shedden’s circuitous route to folk music is shared, in a sense, by Mackenzie. Always a fiddle player, Mackenzie took the decision to head south and undertake classical violin training prior to moving to the Conservatoire to do his masters.

“Graham has always been a fiddle player but he’s always been a violinist as well,” says Shedden. “So he thought it was very important for him to do the classical course because there’s so much focus on technique.

“When you’re listening to Graham or playing with him you wouldn’t think he’s a violinist, he’s definitely a fiddle player.

“But he’s pretty versatile. He was part of the string section for Ross and Ali when they did their album launch at Drygate. And he’s also part of the Grit Orchestra not as one of the fiddlers, but in the violin section.”

With such talented and in-demand members, Assynt may, like many of their contemporaries, struggle to find the time to get together and make music.

“I’ve never met somebody as busy as Innes,” says Shedden. “Trying to tie him down for the Assynt stuff can be a nightmare. He plays a lot with Karen Matheson, he plays with John McCusker, he works with Siobhan Miller and he’s just always busy.

“For me and Graham, Assynt is definitely our main focus and driving it. So we’ve brought Innes along for the ride and we’re all keen to make a good go of it.”

And with the band’s commitment to self-penned tunes, time together might be the only thing preventing them from becoming prolific composers.

“There’s only one track on the album that is traditional and the rest of it is our own tunes,” says Shedden. “It goes back to my degree, really. Part of my dissertation was composing and I had to get a band together to play for the purposes of getting my degree. So that’s really how we came together in the first place.

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“Once we got playing together we just gelled really well so we thought we’d keep it going. I think because of that most of the tunes on the album are mine, although we did get one off Innes, too which was great as he doesn’t really write that many tunes.

“I think as things go on it will be more evenly spread out. I think we might try and keep it the same for the next album – with one traditional track and the rest written by ourselves.”

It is certainly a formula that works on Road To The North, which as an album serves to showcase the huge amount of talent Scotland currently has to offer. Assynt are a serious and confident addition to a folk scene that remains vibrant, youthful and exciting.

Assynt play Arisaig Hotel on August 17 prior to the official launch of Road to the North at Piping Live! at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow on August 18