A LIFE IN SOUND
This series aims to take listeners on an epic and intimate journey through the natural world, all through the medium of sound and at the same time we want to enable a rare glimpse into the life of a man who recorded everything you’re about to hear, one sound at a time.
Martyn Stewart has spent his lifetime on a mission: to record the natural sounds of our planet. It’s a story that will take us from a council estate in Birmingham England and ultimately take him to every corner of the planet. From Belize to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, from Denali to the Galapagos, to some of the most inhospitable locations geographically and politically. He will be attacked by lions and crocodiles, arrested in Japan for filming the annual dolphin slaughter and then find himself in long periods of isolation, in remote corners of the world waiting for 30 seconds of a that perfect sound. This is ultimately a love story – dedicated to our natural world and to the people who spend their lives aiming to give it a voice.
A LIFE IN SOUND
Creative Conversation with ONR
What if the natural world could compose a symphony? Join us as we explore this captivating question in our latest episode featuring Martyn Stewart and singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer ONR.
Born Robert Shields and hailing from from Dumfriesshire in South Scotland, ONR's distinctive compositions, vocals and exceptional musical capability have captured the imagination of some of the world’s biggest acts and most respected musicians; one of ONR’s breakout moments being his collaboration with legendary guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers, who became a huge fan and supporter after having happened to see ONR recording at Abbey Road Studios. Rodgers said of Shields in a recent Forbes interview, “he reminds me of working with Daft Punk. His sense of composition is just wonderfully chaotic."
Discover how an impromptu Zoom call ignited Martyn's passion for intertwining the audio of Scotland's breathtaking landscapes with music. The magic of Scotland's Western Isles, the Highlands, and the historically rich Culloden Moor and Glencoe are not just backdrops but essential players in this unique musical collaboration.
Listeners will be taken on an emotional journey, particularly through the track "You and I," inspired by the Solway Firth. This piece holds profound emotional significance for Robert, offering a deeply personal narrative woven into the melody. You'll hear about the challenges and rewards of composing music driven solely by the rhythms and sounds of nature, from the daunting cries of Peregrine Falcons in Dalbeattie to the serene ambiance of Scotland's untouched wilderness.
The episode culminates in a heartfelt reflection on the transformative power of this artistic endeavor. Martyn and Robert share their gratitude for the creative freedom and inspiration this project has brought into their lives. We invite our listeners to continue exploring the world of natural sounds and music through our online platforms, ensuring the journey into nature's symphony is just the beginning.
www.thelisteningplanet.com
This is Martin Stewart with A Life in Sound from the Listening Planet, in partnership with Biophonica Beats.
Speaker 2:Martin, thanks for making the time to speak to me. First and foremost, it's been nice speaking to you on every occasion that I have so far.
Speaker 1:And likewise too, mate. I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:So I guess we should probably start by talking about how this all came together really, which seems a kind of distant memory to me now.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to think how we started this. I think most roads run to platoon right.
Speaker 2:I got involved. So my my manager, steven, was, had sort of said something about working with someone who's doing audio recordings, natural environments and things, and I hadn't really, to be totally honest, it caught me off guard. I was, I was in the I think I was on holiday at the time um, and there was a zoom meeting and it was the first time that I'd met you, um on that call, and it was the first thing that I'd known anything really about the project. I had been sort of like I hadn't been given any sort of knowledge or like sort of notes before or anything, um, and I just loved it, what you was getting into.
Speaker 2:I genuinely had no idea, and I honestly think that's I like I don't know. I enjoyed it far more because of that, because it was just you telling me what it was about. You were the person who was doing it. You were the person who had all this incredible stuff and I was hearing it straight from you. I don't think I said a word the entire time. I think I was just busy listening to.
Speaker 1:That's right, it was Stephen. And what was his name? Latroyd.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, dennis, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Dennis.
Speaker 2:Those two can talk it up, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you were as quiet as a mouse sitting there and I thought I wonder he's probably thinking this is a bunch of shite. No, the exact opposite. What am I getting dragged into?
Speaker 2:no, I loved listening to it because, again, it's something that's quite you know, working in music and production and stuff like that. This is very different to the kind of normal conversations.
Speaker 2:I have about how people do things, to hear something, just being totally honest with you, to hear of something that was so pure and came from such a I don't know, just such a really genuine place to begin with. Uh, I find it fascinating that I really did. I was super keen to get involved in it, and that was before I even knew of the scottish angle, so I had no idea that you had an affinity with scotland at that point. Um, that was a happy kind of coincidence. So how did the Scottish thing come about? How did you fall in love with Scotland?
Speaker 1:well, I have no idea. I had this intuition basically that there was this draw to Scotland ever since I was probably 10, 11 years of age and a lot of the family holidays you go up north, you know it's the best place to go. Most of the people who bought up in birmingham went west to wales and all that and rill and on the beach it was the easiest to get to. But when I got um, when I got married, I spent so much time up there. When I was 27 I found out my dad was scottish. I'd never met him so maybe that was, you know, the connection for stuff.
Speaker 1:But I loved scottish history and because I go out and record a lot, the, the places, the destinations you head for, the places where there's not a lot of people and, of course, the highlands. It's just a dream. You just drop a mic out and there's hardly any roads and you've got glens and you've got beautiful hills and rolling, you know forest, woodland and just incredible water. You know, know, like locks and stuff and each corner you go around was just, you know, a recordist's dream. I just loved it. And then when I got the angle that you were a musician and we'd only just in the start, combining musicians with natural sound, because I've always kept it away from that and I didn't really want and I thought the angle of having someone Scottish doing Scottish soundscapes was just brilliant. For me it's like standing the broadsword, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah you get but, it was great for me as well, because when I was hearing about what you guys were doing and stuff and the people that you were working with amazing musicians there was definitely a bit of me that thought I'm not really sure what I can bring to this, because the people that were involved were already incredible. But when it became obvious that you had the same kind of love for Scotland that I did, that kind of opened up Scotland, that I did that kind of opened up everything to me.
Speaker 2:It became a lot easier to kind of understand what it was going to be about at that point. You know, because I grew up in rural Scotland and several kind of locations in rural Scotland actually, and I've always been incredibly close with nature and loved the natural world as well. So being able to marry those sort of two or three things together, it was a bit of a dream, to be honest with you. I've really, really enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 1:Well, when you came along with the first track, after I'd dumped all those sounds into a Dropbox and you just went in there and started harvesting stuff out. I didn't know what to expect.
Speaker 1:To be honest with you, no me, neither the first track that came out blew my mind, absolutely blew my mind. It was it was everything that I'd hoped for and something I didn't expect, but it went past expectations. It was just fantastic and I thank you. The the thing, the thing about me my love for Scotland and I've recorded all over the place, from lowlands to highlands to outer Hebrides and Orkneys and stuff like that. There's a beautiful connection between having natural sounds and Scottish-influenced music and it's that audience that you always want to attract, you know. And then the stuff that you came out the first thing I thought it was the signature tune for something like Rob Roy or Highlander or you know, get in there.
Speaker 1:And it was just a fantastic combination.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that track was so, yeah, I guess we'll start by talking about that track because that was the first one that I wrote. It's a track called Breathe and it was from Lochgarry and it was the first Because, yeah, you sent me over a Dropbox with a bunch of files in them and different locations and things, and I started listening to them and Lock Gary was one of the first ones I listened to and I just thought it was absolutely beautiful, martin, like the actual audio itself was. You know, there's something really special about all your audio recordings.
Speaker 1:Thank you, mate.
Speaker 2:You're very gifted at doing, obviously, but that one in particular, when I first heard it it was almost like it was, it was already musical. You know what I'm saying. It was kind of I already had like a rhythm and a melody to it, um, and I think for that reason it's particularly in the kind of earlier tracks that I wrote um with you that I wanted to leave an awful lot of space in the kind of earlier tracks that I wrote with you that I wanted to leave an awful lot of space in the earlier ones because I just felt the audio was so important.
Speaker 2:You know I had to be right at the sort of apex of this track, sort of leading, everything you know, but I just really really enjoyed doing it. And trying to find where that space was was like the kind of that was the challenge to me. You know, instead of trying to fill that space, it was trying to be very selective as to how to do that I was curious to find out what type of message you was going to do through the music.
Speaker 2:You know, through natural sounds, how you were going to convey that through and define it, and you know how do you do that well, the one thing I've really tried to do more than anything for this entire process is, um, there's two things really. The biggest, the biggest thing I've tried to avoid is to use your audio as background audio for a song to sit on top of that.
Speaker 2:That has been my biggest kind of fear, because I think it's the most, it's the easiest thing to do for a writer and musician coming in just to kind of set a song over the top and it sounds nice and that. But for me the whole point of doing this is that it's a collaboration with the natural world audio. So if you're not writing to it and you're not writing with it, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place. Um, and secondly, I've just tried not to overthink anything. I think particularly lyrically, I've just kind of gone with what your audio has inspired within me, for whatever reason, wherever that comes from. I've tried not to overthink it too much and just kind of run with it. Um, and by and large that's been. It's actually been quite difficult because particularly in locations that have a very um, like defined meaning, like culloden, battlefield or glencore, that you know, the temptation is to write about those things something very dark dark, Exactly, yeah, and I think there's definitely leanings in there towards that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But I've tried to avoid being sort of too on the nose with it and really just let the audio and the sort of natural world recordings which will have been there long before any kind of human history.
Speaker 1:Well, your connection to Scotland kind of influences your musical style and the atmosphere of the compositions. It's just, you know, to me I'm biased. It's perfect, it's beautiful. Oh, thank you, and you know you weren't just an overlay, you did let the natural sound speak for itself.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Thank you, I mean. So. That was one of two songs that I wrote to the camera. The other one was a track called I Will Wait, and that was from Rannoch Moor, which was another one that, when I heard it, I just thought it was just an amazing. I haven't spent a lot of time in Rannoch Moor, but I know, having been there a couple of times, that it's enormous. To begin with, it's absolutely huge.
Speaker 1:It's huge you try walking it um, and it's, I'm all right and say it's kind of, it's almost desolate in terms of so it's quite, it is just where, where I went from there I was, I was staying it's probably about 19, 1975, I was about 20 and I was lugging around an agra 5 recorder, you know, with the tape and a big battery and stuff. And I was staying in Kinloch, rannoch um, at the Bun Rannoch Hotel, which is burnt down now apparently. And I made my way out to Ranach Moor Station, which was right at the end of the Loch, and I thought I'm going to walk this bit. You could see these telephone wires, these telegraph wires going, you know, forever in the distance, and then the rolling hills in the background and the mist, and then the rain and I thought what a bloody idiot. You know it's so far.
Speaker 1:But I could drop my mic, you know, down into the glen and record it. And it was just you don't have to have a lot of sounds to make the atmosphere. But you got that wind and the rustle of the heather, you know, and everything, and then just these plaintive sounds chirping away in the back, and then you know crossbills and crested tits and all kinds of birds that come into it. Ranak, more kind of lives with its name, you know, you've got. You say Rannoch Moor and you say, oh, I'm dreaming about going to Rannoch Moor. It's just beautiful, it's like you say, it just goes on forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. When I first heard the audio from it, I mean, the first thing that really obviously grabs you is just the ferocity of the wind and the howl it can really feel it. It's kind of visceral, but I loved it as well. I think that the patterns of the whistles and the sort of the elements that you can hear again, I tried to kind of like turn that into basically translate that into rhythmically what I tried to kind of like turn that into. You know, kind of basically translate that into kind of rhythmically what I felt it kind of and you did it.
Speaker 1:That was thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kind of went for a waltz. I went for like a three, four time thing. It felt right to me to kind of like just the circular patterns that I was hearing. Um, can I ask you? Can I ask you?
Speaker 1:how, what, what initially inspired you to create music and how did your journey go as a musician? How did that work?
Speaker 1:because it's not it's it's almost like you're a gift to something you know you. You just do it so bloody well, I suppose I suppose from someone who's not you know. I can't really play anything. I can strum a guitar and do stuff, but when you come out with something, I give the audio to you and you come back with this amazing composition. How do you do that? How, the bloody hell, do you do it?
Speaker 2:I think that's very kind, mate. Just a lifetime of having done it. To be honest, it's all I've been interested in since I was a kid. I've just had a love of music. It's wrong terminology, it's way way beyond that. It's just inherently part of who I am it's like an arm to you yeah, and again, it's like, you know, I don't always love it as well.
Speaker 2:It can be difficult as well. It's a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, you know, I could be so obsessed with something all the time, but I'm guessing it might be a similar thing for you. But yeah, I just absolutely adore it and it's all I've ever been interested in doing and and fortunately, I've been lucky enough to be able to do it, you know but for something, something like ranak more yeah how?
Speaker 1:how do you address that? What you're gonna, you know, write, compose. How do you? How do you start yourself? Do you put yourself in that frame of mind? Is it the natural sounds that give you that, or is it already an idea in your head?
Speaker 2:So again, I really try to avoid having any ideas going into. I really wanted everything to come from your audio. So for the first two songs I sat at a piano and just played your audio over the top over and over again until something felt like it was right. And I think, particularly given the sparsity of the song as well, sometimes I would just be holding chords for, you know, minutes at a time, just trying to kind of gauge what was kind of right. It's not always like that, you know, when I'm writing commercially or writing for my own stuff, it's a lot, you know, the pace is a lot higher and sometimes you have preloaded ideas of lyric or stories you want to create or whatever. But this was totally different. This was something that I really wanted to be inspired from your audio, which is difficult. Sometimes it's really difficult to keep outside kind of influences away sometimes. Sometimes it's really difficult to keep outside kind of influences away.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's amazing because you do it so natural. Thank you, no, I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:It's been amazing to be asked to do it and it's kind of made me kind of hopefully, sort of build muscles that I've neglected, you know, over the years, which has been really nice as well. One of the tracks that I wanted to's been really nice as well. Um, I was one of the the tracks that I wanted to speak to you about as well, after that kind of first batch of tracks that I sent, was a track I sent you over, a song called you and I, which was from the solway farm. I love that, um, and that was when I was really. It was a really important one to me because that's where I live. Now I'm right, I can see solway froth right now at my window it's.
Speaker 2:It's a place, important one to me, because that's where I live. Now. I can see Solway Firth right now out my window. It's a place that's, in recent years, become really, really important to me. How did you first come to visit there?
Speaker 1:I went up. I was probably newly married with an American wife at the time when we went up to Cumbertrees and I was all around that area around the Saltway Firth and I dropped a recorder out there and I thought I want to do.
Speaker 1:I was fascinated with the borders I loved. I eventually got a chance to walk Adrian's Wall, you know, go from Carlisle to Berwick-on-Tweed, so all the borders are special to me and there's difference in signatures, sound signatures, from lowlands to highlands and there's a different kind of array of bird song and different reflections of, you know, of trees and stone walls and places like that, and water is always something that attracts a lot of bird life. Waterfowl and, you know, around the solway firth is just, it's just a given. You know the. The atmosphere of that is fantastic. And again, that song you you bought. The atmosphere is incredible that the chorus in in um is that is that the one with the choruses, you and I, yeah yeah yeah, as it builds up to that beautiful chorus, it's.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you know the the curtains are just gonna open and there's this fantastic production ready to start. It's amazing, mate, you ate it on the head no, it was a really important one to me.
Speaker 2:This one, um, yeah, it's like a home game, you know, I felt like I couldn't really mess this one up, uh, and it's, uh it was.
Speaker 2:It was special for a few reasons because I'm I'm really bad, um, so I'm not very good at writing love songs. I tend to kind of write them from different angles or kind of do I don't just try to do stuff that's a bit different, because I'm just very sort of my embarrassment threshold tends to be quite low for things like that. Um, but the ability for for me to kind of write a song about me and my wife, nicola, who we live, like I say, just five miles from the soul way forth I didn't have any relationship to it before I met her as well, I didn't know this part of the world at all. Now we live here, and the ability to be given the chance to write a song about that and about us living here and being part of that sort of environment and a place that's really really special to us, that was a real gift. So thank you very much for that, thank you I really loved writing the song.
Speaker 2:It made it easier to legitimise being a bit sorry when these tracks come out what what kind of challenges?
Speaker 1:what do you think the listeners will engage in? How will they engage in that album as a whole? How do you think it's going to be the musical elements, and how are people going to receive that? Do you feel? What do you hope for?
Speaker 2:I guess, I feel I mean, it's not for me to tell how people tell us the music, I guess, but I think for something, for something like this, that is, it's very different from like commercial music that you would normally kind of write.
Speaker 2:For me it's I've really tried to retain um, the. The artistry has been sort of number one sort of priority for me throughout, which has been really, really great, because most of the time with writing, even when it's for yourself as an artist, you do a certain amount of sacrificing in order to fit into, you know, the kind of current accepted standards of popular music. So to be able to completely shed all of that and just write exactly what I felt suited the song was really, really freeing, and so I guess I hope that that is the same inverted.
Speaker 2:I would like to think that they would listen to it, completely sort of stripped of the idea that they would be listening to a normal record. That's something completely different, and I love the fact that they're releasing your audio alongside it, without the music. I think that's really, really important. I love that.
Speaker 1:I think it's important so that you can kind of hear where it comes from. Yeah, I love that. I really love that.
Speaker 2:I think it's brilliant, but yeah, it's been a. I think it's brilliant, but yeah, it's been a total pleasure, it's been brilliant. So the the Solway Firth one was a big one for me. I really enjoyed doing that one and I guess the other one down from from this neck of the woods as well we'll stick it in the lowlands, I guess was the was Brace, the, the Peregrine Falcons and the Rooks and Dalbeattie and I really wanted for a while when I was writing this I really wanted something quite upbeat. I was conscious of the fact that there was a lot of more, a lot of space and a lot of sort of slower tempo stuff, and so when I was looking for something faster and you sent over Peregrine Falcon audio, I was like, well, that'll do that's pretty fast, way much faster than that. And this was a great fun one to write.
Speaker 2:I really really enjoyed writing this one. I have to say I went to school about 5 or 6 miles from Dalbeattie and I had no idea there were Perrigan Falcons in that area at all. I was looking up. I became a little bit obsessed with it. Actually I looked deeply into it. How did you come across them?
Speaker 1:They um, it started off with joining the RSPB and getting to know what birds were where, and peregrine falcons were not really apparent down south, not to a point. There were some city dwellers that you know stayed on building blocks and used the height to dive down at pigeons and things like that.
Speaker 1:But I found a breeding pair that was introduced Same guy who introduced me to the ospreys that came back to Lochore in Argyle, and so it was great, it was that fabulous connection and it was just an ideal place to be able to point a dish up and get those vocalizations.
Speaker 1:I just loved it. You know, like I say, scotland's a given Every time you want to go and get those, those vocalizations. Yeah, I just loved it. You know, and, like I say, scotland's a given every time you want to go and get something. You, you don't have the intrusion of man-made noises as much as you do down in the bigger cities yeah, so can I ask what was the?
Speaker 2:what was the environment you recorded that in, was it? It sounds like there's reflections against some kind of is it a wall or a cliff, or a castle or something.
Speaker 1:It's the way the dish was.
Speaker 2:Is that what it is?
Speaker 1:When you're using a parabolic dish, it's almost like if you're using a camera to do fast racing cars and things and you follow the car the background becomes blurred. If you're doing a yeah, the background becomes blurred, you know. If you're doing a depth of field, yeah. So if you open up the, the aperture, you get everything that's in focus.
Speaker 1:So with a parabolic dish, when these birds are flying 100 odd miles an hour, you're moving the dish, so the background becomes reflective and you try, you try bit of EQ in some ways to get rid of it, but then you bring in a mix and overlay that so that you give the atmosphere around it. It's so difficult the art of using a parabolic dish recording birds. I learned later on that let the bird fly through the dish, don't follow the bird not really because if you move that, you're recording 180 degrees you know in its atmosphere, in its environment.
Speaker 1:So then you get certain phases that you don't really want to have. So it's. It's okay if you're recording species-specific and you want one particular bird to vocalise and record its song, but it's not good when you're using the dish and you're dropping it. You'd rather have a microphone where the bird flies past, but that's the ideal scenario You're never going to get a bird that's going to do that for you.
Speaker 2:Take one, take two, fly past. I really loved the audio in this one. I think, again, I'd been dealing with a lot of more gentle audio to that point, and what I loved about this particular one was just the mania of it. It's so intense. You've, you've, you've got the falcon cry obviously, which is just an amazing sound, but it's it's permeated constantly by this chattering. You know it's the relentless sort of alarm chattering all the time, and it was totally different from anything I worked with and I kind of I really wanted to work with it but I wasn't really sure how to because it was so I don't know, it was just so intense I couldn't really figure out how to fit anything else kind of around it. But eventually I felt like just by trying to, basically trying to copy what was already in there and do something that was equally as choppy and equally as sort of manic and capture all the elements again, you hit it out the park mate.
Speaker 1:It was brilliant. I loved that rhythmic yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed working on this one as well and I went down. It's probably one of the bigger production tracks on the record and I really, really enjoyed it. And again, it's funny you're saying that that's the dish that captured that sort of reflective sound, because I loved that and I tried to use that same style of like slap back delay reverb thing on a lot of the instrumentation in the track as well, to kind of like almost copy that environment, because I loved that. I loved it so much. That was brilliant. So, yeah, really really enjoyed working on that one. It was definitely one of my favourites.
Speaker 1:It was brilliant it's fantastic when you get a text at night time and you go listen to this, I've done this, it's raw and you're setting the scene. And then you click it on and you listen to it and you go oh my god, it's amazing, it's terrifying to send it. To be honest with you listen to it and you go oh my God, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:It's terrifying to send it. To be honest with you.
Speaker 1:How is it terrifying like that.
Speaker 2:I know you're a deeply polite gentleman and you'd never offend.
Speaker 1:Not at all, not at all. I tell you if I don't like something. But it's definitely a part of the way I'm really honest about this because most of my life recording sounds and stuff. It's definitely a part of the way I'm really honest about this because there's most of my life recording sounds and stuff has gone into pictures, gone into documentaries, gone into films.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you get some narration. You get music thrown over the top of it and just get hidden behind everything. So I was always very sceptical about having something overlaying beautiful natural sound, and if I didn't like what you sent me in the first place, I'd have told you. You knocked me over, mate. You absolutely knocked me over with it, it's just fantastic to be able to hear something from a different perspective ok, thank you, mate.
Speaker 2:What I loved, what I loved about this song actually, there was a few songs like this, because I worried about it as well I mentioned the last thing I wanted to do was use it as background audio and I felt that it was important. At times throughout the record I felt it was important that the music overpowered the audio sometimes, because that felt like a natural balance to me. I felt if it just constantly sat at a kind of sort of you know, a generic sort of level of volume against the audio at the time, then it would then it would feel like background.
Speaker 2:So I felt it was important that it kind of ebbed and flowed and what was really useful for doing that was these individual sort of bird calls. The peregrine falcon was one um where it would just pierce out over the audio and it didn't matter what I did. It would just because of the shrillness of them, because of the frequencies it had. It would just kind of like fire out of nowhere anyway, and it didn't. It wouldn't matter how overpowering the music was, it would still kind of find the space um, which I really quite I found quite beautiful. I really really enjoyed it. The other track actually that was very much like that was the, the. I'm just trying to find it here. Let me have a look.
Speaker 1:The Snipe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was it absolutely. Oh, I love the Snipe.
Speaker 1:Because you were saying you should give him credits for the music. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:I think it was. What was the name of that song? Oh it's.
Speaker 1:Was it Small Mercies, not Small Mercies.
Speaker 2:Was it Small Mercies? It was Small Mercies, Not Small Mercs it was. Was it Small Mercs? It was Small Mercs. Yes, Sorry, I've got my notes here.
Speaker 1:See, that's the same thing, but with the Snipe I let the microphone just record the ambient sound and let it have, you know, 360 degrees of sound, instead of just picking out one solitary species and then isolating that. Yeah, absolutely, because what I really liked about the snipe was it reached these heights and it's not calling. It's the wing movement that's making that sound.
Speaker 2:Oh, is it really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not going. Oi, mate, come over here and record this bit. No way, it's just that, no way.
Speaker 2:So it's purely going, Oi mate, come over here and record this bit.
Speaker 1:It's just that. So it's purely sound from the wings. So as it reaches heights and comes down and swoops around, you get that kind of depth of field in the sound. You never know where it's coming from. If you're sitting there recording it and you're sitting on a stool with your headphones on, you have no idea where the hell it is. All it is is just you know its presence. Seriously, and again, you complimented that. I love that. I love small muscles, Thank you. It's very hard for me to say there's one that's better than the other.
Speaker 2:The thing that I love most about that and that kicked off the whole song.
Speaker 2:I had no idea it was a snipe I'm incredibly close with all that stuff but when I heard it it sounded to me like those sort of 90 record skip effects that they would use to sort of do these transitions and things. I just love the idea of using it like that, that sort of like do these kind of transitions and things. I just love the idea of using it like that, that sort of like, really kind of like slothy kind of like. And so the rest of the song is basically the whole style of the song built itself around the idea that that would be used as that sort of sound for that transition, which I thought was really, really cool. I really enjoyed working on that one as well. And again, I think you can maybe tell listening to the songs that come later, the songs that were written later, they have a bit more kind of production in them, because I'm kind of working with that's undermining the first track, I think, if you stick it into one and working with them.
Speaker 2:That's undermining the first track.
Speaker 1:I think if you stick it into one and do a shuffle play, you're going to get a bonus, whatever comes up first. They're just so brilliant and they're so different and, like I say, you complement the natural sounds itself. Going forward with everything, you're hoping to continue to explore that kind of fusion of music in nature with projects? Because I'd love, I'd love it.
Speaker 2:There's been a real, genuinely the moment. It's been a real kind of um, a real eye-opener for me. I think every writer, every musician who finds themselves writing commercially or doing artist stuff or whatever it is, you do end up doing things. Just because you do them and because you're working with other co-writers or other bands or things, you get into these formulated patterns of writing and putting things together. I think everybody does that.
Speaker 2:The difference with working on a project like this is that you're stripped of all sort of expectancy with regard to anything like that. So it's really just you and your artistic interpretation of what you feel it should be and the freedom of doing that has just been really, really enjoyable and quite um, I don't know, for want of a better expression artistically healing. I think you know just like it's really nice to just go back to sort of feeling like you're a kid and just sort of write music for the love of doing it, without really caring about where it goes or what kind of purpose it has. It's just to make it the best. Well, I'll definitely keep doing it. I've really, really enjoyed it. And again, like um, like I, since I was a kid, I've always been around in nature. I walk miles and miles. I walk everywhere. You know, oh it, I can sort of greenery and stuff like that very, very regularly, and my family are all like that as well. So it's been a marriage of two things that are really important to me. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:So going forward with all that, do you have any favourite locations, say for Scotland?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the Western Isles would be one. I would love to spend a bit more time getting into. It's a part of the world that I haven't spent a lot of time in, but the time that I have spent there has been deeply, deeply special to me. I think it's just an amazing part. You could spend years just doing the Western Isles. It's just an incredible place. Yeah, I would love to do it. I would certainly love to do more.
Speaker 2:I lived in the Highlands as well for years. I lived on the Black Isle just off the Moray Firth for a long time when I was a kid, so that part of the world has got a really special meaning to me as well.
Speaker 1:I would certainly love to do more Highlands and the beauty of that is it inspires you to write. You know, it seems like you can give you the sound, tell you where it's from and you just pours air to you, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know how to do it. You're not getting stagnant in any way, you just produce it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that, in any way. You just produce it. Yeah, that that's. That's a huge fucking talent, mate. Well, thank you. No, it's well the enjoyment of doing it, as as uh, as I weighed everything else, it's really been, it's been a tonic. I've really really yeah, it's. I can't thank you enough for involving me.
Speaker 1:It's been amazing, mate it's my honor mate my my final destination, where I, you, I want to end up when I get burnt and chocked and scatter my ashes is just the other side of Skye. I love it around there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love it and Lollapalooza and all these places very special. And just the recordings from there. There I can chuck it into my archive, listen to the stuff and I'm jettisoned right back to that and time stands still. You know, it's untouched, it's beautiful and you can. Basically it's one of those places on earth that you can go back to 20 years later and it still stays the same and I hope it stays that way, you know you can go back to 20 years later and it still stays the same.
Speaker 2:And I hope it stays that way, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I completely agree. I spent a lot of time, especially up the sort of up, the real, real north of Scotland. You start getting towards sort of Ullapool and Wick and all these kind of places.
Speaker 1:I love it up there.
Speaker 2:There is something really, really special about that part of the world. But on that note, actually one of the tracks the lows that I wrote was on Culloden Moor, which so when I grew up on the Black Isle we looked out over the Moray Firth and you could see Culloden Moor from the window. So it was again a place that has been a part of my sort of history, and it was when you said you had recordings from there. It was one that was really key on doing. But what was your time like there?
Speaker 1:On Culloden.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's that sense of being there, you know, just being surrounded by the incredible darkness of it it's.
Speaker 2:That's what I was really hoping you were going to say, because I I I think everyone feels the same on cold in there. There's just an eeriness to, isn't there like a weight and a sort of yeah?
Speaker 1:when you think of the clans, who who dropped you the fighting and the battle, I could probably still find shot and I think today you could still probably do that and it's that untouched yeah but it, it's. It's just that when you're standing there on the moor itself and the wind's just blowing through you and you, just you could almost go back. You know 300 years and say look at this, it's beautiful, it's very atmospheric, it's very eerie, it's very dark.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's a place of utter respect.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You don't get many of that. There's a kind of feeling on Culloden Moor that I get when I go down into Glencoe. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:When you're riding from Rannoch Moor and you go down into Glencoe and you've got those beautiful hills just either side of you and the clouds, the mist in the mountains and those reflective sounds, you know, when there's no cars going through the glen and you get the plaintive sounds of eagles coming from the top and the calls of willets and stuff, it's just fantastic. There's a few places like that in Scotland. I'd like to be able to create the atmosphere of Bannachburn as well, but I've never succeeded in being able to do that atmosphere of um bannockburn as well.
Speaker 1:But I've never succeeded in being able to do that because it's too noisy yeah yeah, yeah, you know, you got sterling bridge and you've got all there and I've dropped a mic down there and I thought, well, I could be in bloody london really yeah, it's just just not right it's funny because I would love to know similar with Glencoe, but I think particularly for Culloden.
Speaker 2:I would love to know if it is the knowledge of history that gives it that darkness and weight for the beholder, because I kind of get. I've also got this weird feeling that if you just plonked somebody there without any knowledge of where they were, I think they would probably still get a feeling of it, for whatever reason. Maybe that's not true, but I don't know. For me, there's a presence to being there that is unlike anywhere. I've really been elsewhere.
Speaker 1:I find that about Scotland as well, though I find there was a thing. There's a ritual that I always did. I'd go up to Scotland probably three, four times a year, and when I got to Gretna I was the first one diving out the car to go and kiss the Scotland sign. It's just stupid, and a mate of mine is from Ireland. He used to try and race me to the sign and trip me up. You know it was that. And then you, on the way back down, you know the m6, when the 74 went to the m6, he'd stick his finger up. You know, you see, england, it's just that crazy crap that that you just have, and it's almost like time stands still, and you know the music and the sounds are there bottled up forever absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. I think it's similar if we speak about the Glencoe track as well, actually, which I've yet to send you. I'm working on it.
Speaker 1:I can't wait for that one.
Speaker 2:It's called Than Water, as in thicker than water, and very similar to the Culloden one I spoke about this earlier to you, actually where I really didn't want the lyrics to reflect the human history of the places that you recorded in, but it's really hard not to as well.
Speaker 2:Do you know what I mean, because you're just very aware of why these places are the places they are, and there is similarly like a real eeriness to Glencoe, I find, but it's also one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I've ever been in my entire life. It's absolutely astonishing.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful, it's wonderful mate what was?
Speaker 2:do you remember your time there?
Speaker 1:all the time. I think if it wasn't and, seriously speaking, if it wasn't for my illness at the moment, I would pack my bags and I'd go and find a place a Weedcroft or whatever up there. But the cold. I look at you sitting in a fleece and I'm thinking it's still there.
Speaker 2:A fleece and shorts man. Do you know what I mean? Oh my God, there you go. That's proper Scottish for you.
Speaker 1:It's 18 Celsius here in Florida and it's bloody freezing for me. And then when I think of I've got a guy, a mate of mine who lives up in Blair Athol and you know I talk to him once a week and so on, I said what's the temperature? And he'll tell me like it's 3 Celsius and I didn't say anything about you know it's 17 here, I'm freezing.
Speaker 2:And he said you wee lollipop he's not doing too bad in Blair Athol, to be fair.
Speaker 1:I mean to be honest but I just love it there's. There's just something, as I've said, I, you know, keep on saying it's like time stood still. They, they bought out a a soap opera thing up there in 89 90 and I think it was called Strath Blair, which was filmed with Ian Carmichael and it was set in Blair Athol and it was up in the glens and the reason why was it, no it wasn't that?
Speaker 1:no, it wasn't as bad as my own way of scoring it was bad, but I think the director of the BBC scrapped it after two seasons. But the reason they picked that area was because you, you could be in 1950, you could be in 1870, you could be wherever you know, and it's it's just untouched yeah, not totally and that the the stories behind sound. You know, I always say a picture tells a thousand words, but sound tells a thousand pictures yeah and every time I listen to stuff I get that urge to want to go back.
Speaker 1:I haven't been back to scotland since uh, for three years and I gotta, like a tes Tesla car, you've got to plug in, get your charge up and I need.
Speaker 2:I need to do that as soon as I can it's funny because I mean, I'm obviously I'm still here and I do a lot of travelling while working things which you know can be testing, but I love, I love learning and I've always as well, because working on this project, you know, I am lucky. Do you know what I mean? The walks that I go on on a daily basis and the weekends that I have and the places that I see and the things that are within I absolutely envy you. It is amazing.
Speaker 1:I really do envy you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yes, and you know don't get me wrong if you'd asked me this four weeks ago, in the depths of January, and it's pissing down every day, and it may have been slightly different, but See, that's, that's the reality check.
Speaker 1:That's what stops me from packing up my bags and going.
Speaker 1:I actually I looked at a place in Inverness. I thought, well, what would I like to do? I'd love to go out and record the Highlands again and just do the stuff that I'd you know. Go and record the places that I did 20 years ago, 30, 40 years ago and see how much change, you know, has happened in there, which I doubt very much. But I looked at a bed and breakfast in Inverness and the guy was wanting to retire and I thought, could I do?
Speaker 2:that. And then that weather thing come in again you know, it gets cold up there, it's bloody cold. It's cold up there, mate. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, it's a funny thing though as well, because I think, being Scottish, there's a certainly for me. Anyway, I love the elements as well. There's something about walking face first into a driving wind that I don't know. There's a life to it.
Speaker 1:A lot of people call that craziness. Yes, probably.
Speaker 2:But I don't know, there's a weird I don't know sort of energy from it as well. It gets the barbarian in me humming. Whatever it is, but no, I guess just to sum up the album from my point of view I had no idea what it was going to sound like before I started writing it, which, again, is not normally the case. Normally there's some kind of loose concept. So to start from scratch and and write something purely just off of your collaboration and I, I really think it's important that it's stressed that it really has been a collaboration as well. You know, it really has been work, working in tandem between both sets of audio. Um, it's just been, it's been a massive pleasure. I've really, really enjoyed it. It's been absolutely humongous.
Speaker 1:For me, it's been very humbling, it's a fabulous experience. And then, of course, I got to meet you in London, so that was cool. That's the cherry on the cake.
Speaker 2:I get it. It's maybe just me being softy, but it's funny, because we met at Abbey Road Studios, which in itself was ridiculous. But I was kind of just walking down the hall looking for you and then you came out with the glow and it felt like I'd known you for years. You know what I mean just going into that session and stuff. It's been a great experience. I can't thank you enough for involving me in it. It's been brilliant.
Speaker 1:I thank you, mate. Thank you enough for involving me in it. It's been brilliant. Thank you, mate, thank you, and I'm looking forward to putting this thing out there and letting people see and listen to how brilliant you are.
Speaker 2:It's an absolute pleasure. Like I say, I'm really pleased both sets of audio are going out and people can hopefully be inspired themselves as well to go and be part of of what you're doing and you know what, what is out there in terms of their own environments and things as well, because it's just like I say it's been, it's been transformative for me creatively and uh, yeah, it's been brilliant really Wrap up now.
Speaker 1:You've just experienced another journey on the Listening Planet podcast. Dive deeper into the world of natural sounds by connecting with us online. Visit our website or follow us on social media. Let the symphony of nature surround you wherever you go. Happy listening.
