Journeys in Sound & Music
Circular patterns are at the heart of the first collaborative album between Kinbrae (twin brothers Mike & Andy Truscott) and fellow Fife-based writer and artist Clare Archibald. Much of the meaning behind what they have created is condensed into its succinct title – Birl of Unmap. Birl is a Scots word meaning ‘to spin’ –…
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In 2015, Brighton duo Grasscut released Everyone Was A Bird, an album author Robert Macfarlane tells us in his liner note essay was “born of footfall”. Its eight pieces explored places important to composer Andrew Phillips and writer/musician Marcus O’Dair from the north coast of Jersey or a fallow field in the South Downs of…
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Now recognized as one of the great masterpieces of nature writing, The Living Mountain is a personal memoir of journeys into the Cairngorm mountains by Scottish author Nan Shepherd. Written during the Second World War, but not published for another 30 years, its twelve chapters convey her experiences in sparse but lyrical terms to present…
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“In Scotland, when people congregate, they tend to argue and discuss and reason; in Orkney, they tell stories.” George Mackay Brown After soaring with the birds on Solan Goose and taking to the sea for Sule Skerry, award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, & producer Erland Cooper turns to the land and its people to conclude his Orkney-themed…
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Ralph Kinsella is a guitarist, composer & electronic musician who hails from Dumfries & Galloway in Scotland’s Southern Uplands. While there is no shortage of travel sites that would point out its attractions, Kinsella sees it as “a liminal, fringe space … where rural and semi-rural Scotland uncomfortably meet urban areas”, a characteristic which he…
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Following the death of his grandfather, Duncan Cowles found comfort and distraction by filming insects in his back garden. From that came his 10-minute short film “In the Company of Insects” which can be most concisely described as “a deadpan meditation on the end of life” done in a unique style the BAFTA Scotland Award…
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Right from the off it seems, Scottish pianist Mhairi Hall‘s albums have blended traditional and contemporary music while maintaining a close connection to the local landscape. She famously took a grand piano to the top of Cairngorm Mountain to celebrate the release of her trio’s debut album and, along with Patsy Reid, arranged a…
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Matthew Whiteside is a composer, collaborator, sound designer & concert producer based in Glasgow. His newest album slated for release later this month is entitled Entangled, a reference to a phenomenon of the quantum realm in which groups of particles are said to share a state and influence each other even when spatially separated, a…
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Kinbrae is the musical project of twin brothers Andrew & Michael Truscott based in Edinburgh and Dundee, Scotland. Their signature sound is at once evocative and experimental, mixing brass, acoustic guitar, percussion and musique concrète to create works rooted in a sense of place utilizing both ambient and contemporary classical elements. The liner notes for…
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Stationary Travels 