Ruby Colley is a violinist, Composer and Sound Artist and in the accompanying notes to her new album Overheard, there is a quote from the late Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh.
“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width.
A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience”
Through his acute powers of observation, Kavanagh provided a unique account of Irish life through his poems. It was his perspective on the world that made his work so engaging. Instead of being occupied with the macro lens of history, national politics and identity, he instead turned to the smaller details of his native Inniskeen, capturing the everyday rural and urban life in his own unique style.
With Overheard, Ruby Colley takes that inspiration and transforms it into music. She also makes great use of field recordings which, while described as launch pads for her work, are intrinsically linked and inform the listener’s response to the music that follows in the same way it informed her compositions.
For The Sea Wrote It, the tune title even suggests that those natural sounds have a hold over the music, as if she is but a receiver, tuned into nature’s complex sonic web. In truth, Colley has created a unique place where those sounds and instruments meet and fasten together. The results are quite staggeringly beautiful, one informing the other in unexpected ways.
The accompanying video to The Sea Wrote It opens to the sounds of the woodlands as she embarks on a sonic journey from the woodland path to the coastal edge with her field recorder pointing forward, marvelling in what she is capturing.
Alongside her own violin which adds hints of baroque (Bach is apparently her first love) to folk and improvisation, she is accompanied by Double Bass, Oud and electronics that create delicate tapestries of sound that add an instant allure to the journey-like experience of Overheard.
The notes say that Overheard seeks to reflect the world we live in now, not an idealized form of nature, which can often lead our attempts to confront the climate catastrophe, but one that bears witness to what is. Ruby feels Climate awareness starts in our back yard and this music seeks to tell this story through the lens of domestic life, and the overlooked details – the gap in the hedge.
Co-arranged with Frank Moon, Tom Clarkson and Bev Lee Harling, watch them performing Edgeland II live from Overheard.
“Edgeland II is a musical interpretation of the intersection between Urban and Rural landscapes. Contrasting textures mirror the contrasts of nature and industrialsation in a reworking of a Bulgarian folktune (origin unknown)”.
Find out more here: https://www.rubycolley.com/
Overheard is out now. Available to stream and on CD/Download via Bandcamp: https://rubycolley.bandcamp.com/album/overheard