sing the gloaming ep + artist book

‘Sing the Gloaming’ is a collaboration between Professor Simon Kirby and artist/musicians Tommy Perman and Rob St. John, taking its inspiration from Simon’s research in the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Language Evolution.

‘Sing the Gloaming’ has already found temporary art installation homes in a damp Scottish forest (Sanctuary Festival 2017), and in a disused Dundee shop front (Dundee Design Festival 2018). The fullest realisation of the project is released in 2020 as a 10” EP record and artist book. The record moves between ambient washes of vocals, kaleidoscopic harmonies, and abstract modular pulses and drones.

‘Sing the Gloaming’ is a project on light, language and landscape, created using experimental art and music, featuring some of Scotland’s finest vocalists: Kenny Anderson (King Creosote), Nerea Bello, Aidan Moffat, Emily Scott (Modern Studies), Su Shaw (SHHE), Hanna Tuulikki and Andrew Wasylyk.

Each singer was asked to find a place where light moves, then record short new vocal pieces around particular ‘light words’ there, thinking about the qualities of the space they were in, and those of the words themselves when recording their pieces.

The ‘light words’ in ‘Sing the Gloaming’ are phonaesthemes, words whose form seems to evoke their meaning directly. In the English language, there are many beginning with “gl” which relate to light, for example: glimmer, glitter, glow, gleam and gloom. These words have all evolved from a single word spoken over 5,000 years ago near the Black Sea. Their different forms and meanings bear the hallmarks of their individual routes through history, across languages and cultures to present-day English.

Once each singer had finished their recordings, they were passed onto the next singer, who in turn listened and improvised their own ‘light word’ piece. Melodies emerged and evolved in this process: mirroring the real-world evolution of the words themselves.

Their recordings were (re)composed using a series of innovative production techniques, using modular synthesisers, granular synthesis and convolution reverbs created directly from data on the use of the “gl” words in five million books published since 1500. The trio have form for such sonic experiments: Simon and Tommy created Cybraphon (now in the permanent collection of the National Museums of Scotland) as FOUND in 2009, Tommy and Rob made the ‘liquid cartography of Edinburgh’ Water of Life in 2014, and the trio created the critically acclaimed (and Brian Eno-approved) sound installation and release ‘Concrete Antenna’ in 2015.

But for all its conceptual thinking and tinkering: the new record is a playful and joyous listen. The vocals wash in and out creating new clusters of chords, melodies and rhythms, each singer collaborating with the next, their collective efforts coalescing like the words in language itself. Tiny, fleeting sounds from their recordings are extracted and reshaped as fluttering percussion and guttural sub-bass. Think: Laurie Anderson, Julianna Barwick, Suzanne Ciani or Éliane Radigue in a language science lab, and you’ll be halfway there.

The ‘Sing the Gloaming’ 10” is released on Blackford Hill, a new Edinburgh record label inspired by ‘sounds in place.’ The label is the latest creative venture by designer/publisher Simon Lewin, co-founder of St Jude’s and its Random Spectacular imprint. Produced in association with the Centre for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh.

Order the 10″ EP + artist book package here.
Read a feature on the project in Wire Magazine (June 2020).