Mellowosity is the debut studio album by Scottish Celtic fusion group Peatbog Faeries, released in 1996 on Greentrax Recordings. After forming as a vocal-based Celtic rock group in 1994, the duo had settled into becoming an instrumental Celtic fusion group by the release of Mellowosity. The album draws from a wide range of musical styles and influences including jazz, reggae, afrobeat, rock, Eastern music, dub and funk, that are mixed in with the band's traditional Scottish folk/Celtic sound featuring fiddles and bagpipes. The album was released in December 1996 to positive critical reviews. Dave Steger of Allmusic praised the eclectic sound of the album, and Marshall Anderson of The Living Tradition said "overall texture is thrilling and full of the unexpected." The album remains one of Greentrax Recording's best-selling ever albums. The band would tour the album throughout the rest of the 1990s before recording its follow-up record, Faerie Stories, in 1999. Background and recording Peatbog Faeries formed on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in 1994. In their early days, they sang on several tracks, and were a more traditional Celtic rock band, but noted fans wanted more of the instrumental tracks, a position the band shared. Peter Morrison said that "obviously, as a band you normally gravitate to the stuff people are enjoying the most. You go by the crowd. We started mixing a bit of reggae and funk with pipe tunes. That was really popular. So we kind of started moving towards that." By the point of recording their first album, they had moved away from songs completely. Prior to the recording of their first album, the band had been gigging around the Isle of Skye, undergoing many transformations. Consistent throughout this time has been "the dexterous thrapple" of piper, Peter Morrison, "the jazzy bass playing" of Innes Hutton, and the "virtuoso picking of various stringed instruments" by Ali Pentland. These founders were joined by fiddler Ben Ivitski, synthesiser and keyboard player Norman "Nurudin" Austin and Iain Copeland on percussion. The band began recording their debut album, Mellowosity, in 1996 and finished it by the end of the year. The album was engineered by Beeg Al & Terry Adamas at Rel Studios, Edinburgh, and mixed by Iain Copeland and the Peatbog Faeries themselves. Iain Copeland dedicated his performance on the album to Steven Smillie, noting "gone but not forgotten" in the liner notes. Of the nine tunes on