Simon Kirby, Tommy Perman and Rob St John. release a new album ‘Sing the Gloaming’.

The seven-track effort forms a project on light, language and landscape, created using experimental art and music, and features Kenny Anderson (King Creosote), Nerea Bello, Aidan Moffat, Emily Scott (Modern Studies), Su Shaw (SHHE), Hanna Tuulikki and Andrew Wasylyk.

The concept behind the set of recordings saw each singer 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.

Five of the resultant tracks – the 15-minute ‘Phonaestheme’, plus ‘Borrowing’, ‘Organised Breathing’, ‘Onset and Rime’ and ‘Reconstructed Form’ – feature on a 10″ vinyl version, which comes with booklet and packaging designed by Perman, and is available, like the ‘full’ version of the album, at blackfordhill.bandcamp.com.

Aside from the featured vocalists, the album sees Professor Simon Kirby team up with artist/musicians Tommy Perman and Rob St. John, taking its inspiration from Kirby’s research at the University of Edinburgh.

The Professor of Language Evolution had previously collaborated on the Scottish BAFTA-winning Cybraphon in 2009, #UNRAVEL and Concrete Antenna, alongside Perman’s art rock combo FOUND, and winning The List’s “outstanding contribution to Scottish Arts”.

The latest project has previously existed as an art installation in a damp Scottish forest for 2017’s Sanctuary Festival, then in a disused shop front during Dundee’s Design Festival in 2018.

Perman and St. John had also previously worked together, the former producing an audio-visual reimagining of St. John’s band Modern Studies of their 2019 album ‘Emergent Slow Arcs’.

The album is available now, on Edinburgh-based label Blackford Hill – founded by designer/publisher Simon Lewin as an offshoot of his publishing imprint Random Spectacular.

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