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Glen Scotia
has unveiled details of its pioneering
new music project, 'The Sound of Glen
Scotia', which will be revealed at this
year’s Campbeltown Malts Festival.
Glen Scotia
Distillery has unveiled details of its
pioneering new music project, ‘The Sound
of Glen Scotia’, which will be revealed
at this year’s Campbeltown Malts
Festival Tuesday 23rd – Wednesday
24th May 2023.
The project is an artistic collaboration
between whisky writer Neil Ridley, folk
singer-songwriter Jenny Sturgeon and
music producer Dean Honer, who have
created a new two-track musical journey
using elements from around Campbeltown
and the distillery to capture the
essence of Glen Scotia.
The tracks will be unveiled at this
year’s Malts Festival through an
immersive exhibition deep inside the
distillery’s atmospheric warehouse. With
the room in complete darkness, a new
music video, made especially for the
project, will be screened on the casks
in the warehouse while guests plug into
a headset to listen to the A-side track,
‘Copper Heart’, with a dram in hand.
Shetland-based Jenny Sturgeon wrote and
recorded vocals which capture
observations of her time spent with the
distillery team and in the town, soaking
up the surrounding environment.
The track audio has been built using
sounds of the distillery, including the
banging of casks as drumbeats, mills
running, soundbites of the distillery
team’s conversations during production,
microphones in casks of whisky, and the
sounds of birds in the courtyard in a
nod to the climate and unique natural
environment of Scotland’s smallest
whisky-making region.
Led by music producer, Dean Honer, the
project used specialised audio equipment
to accurately mimic the proximity of
sounds. A binaural microphone, which
resembles a featureless human head, was
used to mimic the exact proximity of
sounds as they were heard during
recording. Bespoke-made hydrophones were
submerged into casks of liquid,
recreating a ‘suspended-in-time’ sound
of the outside world, as the Glen Scotia
whisky gently matured within.
These distillery sounds, gathered over
several days, were then mixed with
traditional acoustic instruments and
Jenny’s lyrics.
Neil Ridley, whisky writer and musician,
was in charge of artistic direction. He
said: "With an extraordinary array of
distinct sounds, frequencies, hums,
knocks and rattles, Glen Scotia is quite
the playground for the sound recordist.
Imagine writing and recording a
brand-new song where the lyrics and the
instrumentation were heavily influenced
by the distillery. This has been a
lifelong dream of mine, with the vision
of bringing to life the visceral thrill
of visiting a working distillery, even
if you were thousands of miles away, and
we finally got the opportunity thanks to
Glen Scotia."
Jenny Sturgeon said: "My lyrics were
inspired by conversations and
observations of the distillery team and
local historians who live and breathe
the area. Hearing directly from the team
– their shared vision of the distillery
and what it means to them personally –
was hugely inspiring."
Nick Bradley, Brand Manager at Glen
Scotia said: "Every year ahead of the
Festival, Glen Scotia invites an artist
or artists to collaborate with the team
in Campbeltown, to see the distillery
and our home through their eyes and
artistic medium. Our greatest hope is
this can give whisky lovers all over the
globe a flavour of our home.
"I'm thrilled to have had the
opportunity to partner with these
incredibly talented musicians and watch
this extraordinary project come to life.
It is a testament to the power of music
and its ability to capture the essence
of a place and its people, and the
fusion of music and whisky is a truly
unique way to bring our distillery and
whisky-making region to life."
The collaboration follows Glen Scotia
and industry writer Becky Paskin’s
‘Whisky Experiment’ at last year’s Malts
Festival and artistic collaboration
‘Spirit Safe’ with Alice Angus, as Glen
Scotia continues to bring to life the
senses and elements that define
Campbeltown and its whisky heritage.
Those unable to attend the Festival and
looking to hear the second track will be
able to purchase a limited-edition vinyl
from the Glen Scotia website, which will
be available from the end of May
alongside the festival.
The B-side track on the album, ‘The
Sound of Glen Scotia’, is a 17-minute
fully immersive experience. Depicting
the sound of barley being delivered and
the ethereal high-pitched song of the
copper stills, the track features
rhythmic elements provided by the sound
of casks being opened, filling out the
bass frequencies. The track features an
extraordinary array of distinct sounds
and a broad spectrum of tones.
Launched in 2008, the Campbeltown Malts
Festival is a celebration of the region
known as the ‘Victorian Whisky Capital
of the World’ due to its illustrious
past and the role whisky-making has
played in the town for centuries.
This year the programme will be bigger
than ever before with a jam-packed
series of events and an opportunity to
learn more about the world’s finest
drams. As well as the immersive Sound of
Glen Scotia experience, guests will have
the opportunity to hear directly from
Neil Ridley, Dean Honer, and Jenny
Sturgeon in three ticketed talks and
demonstrations over the day, accompanied
by a special dram.
Glen Scotia’s full programme of events
and tickets are available via its
website: www.glenscotia.com
You will also find the current Glen
Scotia whisky range
available from specialist online
whisky shops such as
The Whisky Exchange,
The Whisky Shop,
Hard To Find Whisky
and
Master of
Malt
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