Submerged by Kerrie J Robinson

Kerrie J Robinson’s latest Submerged EP is a culmination of hundreds of field recordings gathered across seven years of exploring the shores, shallows and depths of the Hebridean Sea. These sounds have been chopped and skewed, pushed and pulled like the tides from which they originate, into her first five-track solo debut.

Throughout the creation of Submerged, Robinson asked herself—how far can you take sound from its original source? And when does sound become music? Using her collection of water-based recordings, the EP begins on the shores of Ardnamurchan, before slowly descending into its bodies of water. With place being central to this body of work, each track is named in its local historic languages of Scottish Gaelic and Norse.

Water dappling, ice melting, and waves splashing are just some of the sounds modified to create the different rhythms and frequencies that make up Robinson’s debut. Opening track ‘Feamainn’ (pronounced fay-min, Scottish Gaelic for seaweed) was created from the sound of crackling seaweed on the shores of Loch Sunart, and snow slowly melting and gently dripping from the leaves of trees has been manipulated into the loud thump of a bass drum which forms track ‘Fuath’ (pronounced foo-ahm, referring to malevolent spirits in Scottish Highland folklore). The most melodic components of the EP were created using glass bowls filled with different levels of water sourced from a nearby burn which feeds into Loch Sunart from the heights of Ardnamurchan, and other bass elements have been created from waves violently splashing into a rocky gully. Without the use of any instruments, Submerged is an experimentation of nature as music.

Instead of stripping nature of its value throughout the process of making the EP, Robinson has merely enhanced it. Whilst she has dissected and altered these sounds, constructed them into something new, nature is still very much present at the heart of the record and its watery depths. It is congruous in that Robinson has retrieved these sounds from nature, and it has, in turn, given something back to her—in the form of Submerged. But she hasn’t had to disrupt nature in order to obtain it, and nature has remained uninterrupted. It is a nod to the symbiotic relationship between humans and more-than-humans and the reciprocal nature of all things.

Submerged was mixed by producer TJ Allen (Bat For Lashes, Torres, Laura Groves) and mastered by Andrea Gobbi at Carrier Waves Mastering in Glasgow. The EP is released digitally on Robinson’s own record label named ‘We Have Also Sound Houses’, after the 1627 quote by English philosopher Francis Bacon (The New Atlantis), which pinned to the door of the Radiophonic Workshop by founding member, the composer Daphne Oram.

The EP is released digitally on Robinson’s own record label - ‘We Have Also Sound Houses’ - named after the 1627 quote by English philosopher Francis Bacon (The New Atlantis), which pinned to the door of the Radiophonic Workshop by composer Daphne Oram.

10% of each record sale will be donated to music and climate charity Earth Percent, whose mission is to use the power of music to combat the climate crisis.

This release was supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.

Bio by Blue Kirkhope

Kerrie J Robinson is a multi-instrumentalist and maker of music and sounds based in the rural west Highlands of Scotland.

kerriejrobinson.com