. (sorry sold out)
​An almanac of Scottish traditions, seasonality, nature and cycling

​I started to collect over the year, things that felt relevant for each month. Traditions, stories, images, poems. I did this quite unconsciously in fits and bursts. In a kind of frustrated grab at trying to make something of the year, or get my head around the passing of the seasons without the usual marking points. I wanted to explore how folk culture and practices influence me even when I am not singing. Its an almanac with space for you to observe your own traditions, rhythms and important dates. I wanted to put it in a filofax but it was too expensive.
You can buy the almanac on bandcamp

​I was invited to perform at the DCA for Seized by the Left Hand. This multifaceted project, curated by Eoin Dara and Kim McAleese (Programme Director of Grand Union, Birmingham), brought together artforms such as painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and film, with performance, poetry and writing. The exhibition at DCA also includes a curated display of artefacts from the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum housed within the University of Dundee, highlighting specimens from the animal kingdom that beautifully resist normative categorisation when it comes to gender, sexuality, bonding and kinship. Seized by the Left Hand set out to champion artists, performers and writers who, much like Le Guin was, are engaged in the vital act of radical imagining: crafting alternative spaces and worlds that hint at ways in which we all might better live, love and care for one another.

Opening this show really illuminated my own process to me. The curators explored aspects of Le Guins approach which influenced the show and their thinking, and discussed her 1986 essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” from the book “Dancing at the Edge of the World” (Grove Press, 1989). In “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, Ursula Le Guin reiterates the idea that the first tool, rather than being a weapon, was probably a vessel or bag for gathering.  This “carrier bag theory” has two key hypothesis: it positions women as the earliest creators of tools, and the novel as a vessel for stories which can move beyond a hero narrative. 

My process for creating new work tends to begin with gathering a whole range of material- poems, archive recordings, images, sounds, instruments, children’s rhymes, melodies and pieces of the landscape itself. Shells, bones, plants, ceramics. This is not so much a considered process but a kind of crashing through my natural encounters with the folk tradition and the context it sits in, and seeing what sticks. Le Guins essay helped me see this in the context of a wider approach to creating narratives and stories. 
“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a  container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time....”
Does it not describe perfectly the process of gathering, creating, recording, performing, sharing and saving that is inherent to the development of a repertoire of song? Hearing, hearing again, finding, practising, reiterating, choosing the colours, shifting, recombining but ultimately bringing together. 

Before setting out to achieve anything in particular, before i was performing, I developed a repertoire of stories sung from women’s perspectives. Once I started sharing this work the focus became the foundational space that women occupy in the Scots song tradition. Quinie is  NE scots word meaning a quine-stane, is a cornerstone- a foundational stone of a building, as well as a woman. Le Guins essay articulates why I was drawn to song to do this - how the singers process of gathering and holding creates a net where different kinds of narratives can be.
“It's clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or  a pedestal, or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.”

X-ray Audio is a project by The Bureau of Lost Culture's Stephen Coates and Paul Heartfield. It tells the story of the underground community of bootleggers and music lovers who defied the censor in cold war era Soviet Union to make their own records of forbidden Western Jazz, Rock ’n’ Roll and banned Russian music. It is now an online archive, a book, an award-winning documentary and an internationally touring exhibition with live events.
The Bureau of Lost Culture are dedicated to recollecting counter-cultural stories through film, installations and broadcasts. By evoking the spirit of the forgotten underground they aim to inspire with a sense of risk and provocation.
For Radiophrenia they will present the story of the X-Ray Audio Project and Soviet Bone Music culture in images, film and sounds from the era. This will be followed by live performances by Rebecca Wilcox, Quinie and Toi-so which will be directly recorded onto X-Rays using a 1950s recording lathe with immediate playback.
www.x-rayaudio.com/x-rayaudioproject
Commissioned as part of Radiophrenia’s two week long radio broadcasts, brought to you live from their studio at CCA Glasgow. Funded through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Funding with additional support from CCA Glasgow.

From The kind people at Lost in a sea of sound

Sounds echoing through time, always infused and then diluted with the newest and most progressive music. The magnificence of days and decades ago rendered for aging souls. On the rare occasions, when current creations build upon fading sonic delight, the resonance of both past and present rings in quantum beauty. Betwixt & Between 4 has well formed roots though time, exhibiting many traditional attributes from the way music was played and sung. This composition is more though, subtle creativity procured from the span of years, making the finished delivery both nostalgic and contemporary simultaneously.

For cassettes, Betwixt & Between 4 clocks in around the very standard thirty minutes. With the sides split between Jacken Elswyth and Quinie, combined with how purely fascinating both artists are, the entire listen seems incredibly short. A very wonderful merit concurred by many repeated listens.

On the first side, Jacken Elswyth seamlessly plays the banjo through improvisational and traditional forms. Her use of the bow and shruti mesmerize time and place only to be followed by traditional folk pronunciations, equally as captivating. The third track, and the shortest on Jacken's side, is an absolute sublime en-devour. Her use of delay with banjo flows like early dawn light, images slowly substantiating with colors that can not be accurately described. Then grounded on "The Banks of The Green Willow". Accompanied only by birds, Jacken sings a sad tale similar to the unfortunate death of Omie Wise.

Quinie has six songs on the second side. Josie Vallely singing with Gordon Bruce and Tom Merewether accompanying in sound. Alluring traditional Scottish song style in modern context. Songs drawing from cheerful sources as well as traditional. A refreshing direction from years ago, many songs of this genre were depictions on the harshness of life. Now on this set, the ability to draw from comedy rather than tragedy is part of the makeup. One aspect making delightful realization is how experimental this group is. An assortment of sounds surfacing with grandeur, supporting traditional vocal style with present day wisdom. Quinie is completely compelling, thoughts of these selections being recorded a century ago are real, but more light and playful topics with effects are well received.  

This is the fourth cassette from Betwixt & Between Tapes. There are a few different purchase options with cassette being described here, also compact disc, and lastly hand-carved linocut / hand-pulled prints with digital included. Looking through everything Betwixt & Between Tapes has done to present, there are not many physical pieces remaining. Only fifty copies of Betwixt & Between 4, so don't wait very long.

living the dream.