Scottish fiddler, composer and producer Aidan O’Rourke (Lau) released the final instalment of his vast 30 (digital) album project “365″ in December 2020 and to celebrate Reveal are issuing a physical deluxe Double CD with 365 story booklet (order via Reveal Record Store / Bandcamp) which you can listen to below.
We caught up with Aidan to chat about this extensive project as well as his upcoming plans.
You’ve just recorded and released 365 new tunes in a year, that seems an almost impossible undertaking what made you do it? How did the project come about?
The project began purely as a personal writing exercise. I had no plans for it to grow as it has – into a duo, a trio, an eight-piece music/spoken word ensemble, a sound installation … and 33 albums! All a bit much, some might say. But it all stemmed from James Robertson’s words, and those words had so much life in them. I’m a huge fan of his writing. And The Land Lay Still and The Testament of Gideon Mack are hugely important books in the way they tap into and question contemporary Scotland. I was given his short story collection 365: Stories as a Christmas gift in 2015. A short story for each day of the year, each of those stories containing exactly 365 words. I began reading one each day from January 1st 2016 and fell in love with the form. I loved how concise and powerful each story could be. I found the form not unlike how I would try to write a traditional-type melody – two or three parts, the emotional arc, the resolve.
By the end of January I was smitten with the form and found the act of reading one every day had a meditative effect – a very particular escapism. This was a three-minute gift to myself every day which would leave me with a vivid emotion. Like a film distilled into a short vignette. I wondered if I could harness that concision and use it to make music.
Around that time James was working on a concert called Pilgrimer at Celtic Connections. Working with Karine Polwart, he reimagined Joni Mitchell’s album Hejira in Scots. I introduced myself to James and became awkwardly fan-boy about his books (!) and admitted I was attempting to write a tune each day for a year inspired by his stories. His reaction was along the lines of: ‘Don’t do it! Are you mad?!’ His wife Marriane was also shaking her head and staring at me quite seriously; she had witnessed the impact of his undertaking! I told him my reasons: the form, the distilled emotion, how I felt I could harness all that into making music. James carefully and caringly suggested I give myself a month of writing to see how I coped. I started on 1st March. By 28th February the following year I had 365 new pieces of music.
It definitely wasn’t easy, but I was helped by James’s encouragement. I would send him tunes and he would also check in. We became friends through that year of writing.
In June that year, I went to hear Kit Downes play at the Vortex in London. I was awed by his harmonies. After the show we spoke about doing some work together – seemed both of us were looking at stripping back our aesthetic a bit, focusing on nuances, playing with form. He asked if I had any tunes I could send him. ‘WELL!’ I said, ‘As it happens I’ve been working on a few…’ I started sending him my 365 tunes.
Kit came up to Scotland a few months later and we spent a few days in the studio. When I decided to record all 365 tunes, Kit was integral to shaping them, growing them into a new sound.
In the end he recorded 120 of the 365 tunes with me. Sorren Maclean played guitar on 40, Esther Swift played harp on 17 and I recorded 188 solo. Seeing those numbers written down reminds me of how sprawlingly nuts the whole endeavour has been.
How did you manage it and to stay focussed for that long?
I got into a routine: focusing first thing in the day. Fiddle out, mic open, ready to record. I would clear my head, read the story then just play, focusing on my first emotional response. Sometimes the tune would form quickly, other times it could drag its heals the whole day. If I was travelling, I had romantic notions of using the downtime before a gig to feel inspired, but romantic notions rarely turn out to be real. So there were definitely a few near-midnight hotel ramblings.
I was really interested in what the process was doing to my writing and playing. There’s nothing like repetition for amplifying character traits. I was already getting bored with my default way of writing after a month. My harmonic patterns became glaringly familiar and I was keen not to repeat myself, so I started finding ways of exploring harmony and form that took me in a different direction. This became exciting. I’ve definitely come out of the cycle a different player and a more adventurous writer.
Sequencing the tunes into coherent albums must have been a major task ?
I must admit that I left all the heavy lifting of sequencing of the Complete Works to Tom Rose at Reveal Records. It’s his superpower and I trust him entirely.
The Best of 365 double cd compilation features tracks from each of your thirty 2020 digital albums and some of the stories by James Robertson. Which musicians did you choose to collaborate with you on the project and why?
As explained above, Kit was involved almost from the start and was integral to the whole thing. It became clear really quickly that we had a huge amount to explore in each other’s musical spectrums. In Kit, I heard all these complex Ravelian hybrid chord structures and parallel harmonisations which I felt was a gateway to expanding my traditional music harmony. I think he heard something in my melodic writing and implied harmonies. So it felt like exploration every time we sat down to play music together.
Esther Swift has a really intricate way of through-composing her accompaniments to tunes. I wouldn’t even call them accompaniments – it’s like a whole other piece of music sits alongside what I’m playing and I really love it. With Sorren, I went up to An Tobar on the Isle of Mull to make those 40 tracks. I’ve known Sorren since he was a teenager and he’s grown into one of my favourite guitarists. I wanted his solid rhythmic approach on particular upbeat tunes and also his beautiful sensitivity in some of the dreamier lyrical tunes.
You performed 365 at the digital Celtic Connections recently and have been busy as a curator of events over the years through Lau-Land festival events and your own major multi-artist presentations in Scotland. Do you have plans to present more events?
Yes I do! I love bringing artists together and rethinking what a concert can be. I love making immersive pieces. This year has been devastating for live performance, but it’s allowed us to use film, words, music, theatricality in a different and sometimes more intimate way.
How has your physical environment inspired your new music in the last years?
I’ve never felt the turn of the seasons like I have in the last year. Usually, I’m on the move a lot and taking in so many different environments that it’s hard to notice these detailed and beautiful changes. Inspiration tends to play out in tangential and surprising ways. I used to, say, climb a mountain, then I’d then want a direct inspiration from that experience. If it didn’t come in the moment I’d get a bit frustrated and maybe let the experience go. I’m more interested now in the accumulation and the blur.
You’ve recorded a new Folk Songs ep with Lau (reviewed here). What else have you been doing during the time off the road?
Thankfully I’ve managed to keep myself pretty busy these past dark months.
I wrote and recorded the soundtrack to a film that just premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival. It’s called Iorram and it’s an incredible portrait of the fishing industry in the Hebrides, and that industry’s link to Gaelic language and community. It’s a really beautiful film that uses contemporary footage with archive voices. My music weaves around the voices with Graeme Stephen (guitar), Lizabett Ruso (voice), Adam Kinner (saxophone), Lucy Railton (cello) and Tom Gibbs (harmonium and piano).
I was asked by Orchestra of the Swan to reimagine a movement of Vivaldi (see below).
I’ve been working on a piece for violin and electronics with the inspiring violinist Alexander Janiczek. I made a film for Burns and Beyond Festival in Edinburgh with Rachel Sermanni, the poet Kathleen Jamie, Ricky Ross and piper/singer Allan MacDonald. Oh – and! – I started a PhD in composition at Ulster University! So back to school for me. Other than that I’ve been mainly gardening, cycling and doing the lockdown cliché of making bread.
Which artists are you listening to at the moment ?
I’m obsessed with Mallian singer Oumou Sangaré’s album Acoustic. Linked to my PhD, which is partly about exploring the tensions between tradition and innovation, I’ve been listening Ligeti, Bartók, Takemitsu. Oliver Leith’s good day good day bad day bad day has been on repeat in our flat. It sums up some kind of blithe marginalia. Also, my partner is currently researching a Brazilian instrument inventor so for the last few weeks there’s been a lot of avant-garde Tropicália emerging from her study. Wild.
What have you been reading?
A lot! This year’s been good that way. Long overdue, I’m catching up with the books of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Anything and everything by Ali Smith. Kamila Shamsie. Sarah Moss. Lisa Halliday. Gavin Francis both his beautiful Island Dreams and his recent book on the pandemic.
You’ve worked with Reveal Records now for almost 15 years and over that time experimented and grown a considerable and varied catalogue – to what extent does the label inform and encourage you to experiment and try new things?
Tom Rose at Reveal Records has been a guiding light to me through those 15 years. I really trust his judgement and that trust is an essential backstop and support a creative artist. I know Tom will only release my music if he believes in it. He doesn’t want me to repeat myself. Tom and I both enjoy finding the interesting margins between genre definitions: the experimental, liminal ground where mucky and magical things happen. He has supported me taking the long way round. The dangerous cliff route rather than sticking to the path!
How best to approach such a vast collection?
Each tune has a short story linked to it. I think the best way to appreciate each track is to read the story along with the music. The stories and tunes are so linked that any summary I give here may well detract! Each of story is in CD sleeve notes. Or better, buy James’s book! 365:Stories.
Memories of the recording?
I remember the day that Mattie Foulds (recording engineer) discovered the piano we’d been recording on was the piano on which Holst wrote The Planets in London over 100 years ago. That changed the atmosphere in the room somewhat. One of the harmoniums we used once belonged to Ivor Cutler. There’s a story about Ivor falling out with that harmonium: he left it behind in a theatre in Glasgow where it sat, abandoned, for years.
I did make a note of where I wrote each tune. Going back through them all prior to recording was a memorable journey. Often there was a synergy between where I was and what the story of the day told me.
Track 9 – We drove down the road, saddened by my father’s decline – was written on Ben Lawyers on 15th May, stags all around us (not a white stag as in the story, but still!).
Track 10 – We would never have gone out if we had not intended to return – was written in Sorren’s little cottage in Kintra on the Isle of Mull on 30th December. We had house-swapped for New Year. I wrote the tune in this little cottage by the sea on a wild, wind-battered night on the eve of the last day of the year.
Here’s the story that goes with it:
The Search Party – 30th December
We would never have gone out if we had not intended to return. We left a fire in the grate, banked up with dross, and a light in the window in case we were still out after dark. We left provisions too: tea, coffee, sugar, bread, tins of this and that; the makings of several meals. And there were a few bottles, the contents of which we were sure would fuel stories and songs around the fire when everyone had eaten their fill. Yes, we certainly meant to return.
But somehow we were distracted. It wasn’t so much that we lost our way, more that we found a path we weren’t expecting, and we followed it. We were seeking something. That was the whole reason for going out. The path might lead us to whatever it was. But what seems to have happened is that after a while the path began, as it were, to follow us: it went where we went, rather than the other way round. And now I am not sure that it was a path at all.
We paused to rest not long ago, huddling together against the cold, and one of us said, ‘What is it we are looking for?’ Nobody could remember. Another asked, ‘Is it a thing, or a person?’ So we checked, but we were still roped together and we did not think anyone was missing.
The snow has stopped falling, but everything is white. The moon, though so very far away, is bright. Perhaps we should have left markers, to guide us back. It is too late for that now. We must go forward. We will reach some- where eventually.
By the time we do, we will probably have forgotten the details of what we left behind – the smell of wood smoke, the lamp in the window – but some- thing will stir in our memories. At the end of our search will be an unfamiliar place, which, nevertheless, we will recognise. And I think then we will discover that some of us did not make it after all, and we will remember their faces and their voices. And we will go into the warmth, taking them with us.
Are you planning on taking a well deserved break or do you have more new music on the way?
A break? What’s a break?
I’m mastering the soundtrack album this month and that should be released this Summer and Lau are doing an online virtual lau-land for Bristol Beacon Theatre on Saturday 27th March
http://bristolbeacon.org/shows/lau-land-online-2021/
The Best of 365 Double CD and all 30 albums in the series are available now at Reveal Records Bandcamp https://aidanorourkemusic.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Genevieve Stevenson