At Rahoy, the Early Light is a meditation on geography and memory. It is a profoundly personal record, linking a recent emotionally significant journey I made across continents on the one hand, with an important place from my childhood growing up on the west coast of Scotland on the other. The first side of the album was recorded live as an improvisation on modular synthesiser, just days after I returned from that trip. In fact, I was still jet-lagged from the journey while I was playing. For the second side, I collaborated with Andrew Ostler on baritone horn and trumpet. For the record I made use of synthesiser modules that Ostler created to generate a backdrop of drones using a mathematically perfect but slightly uncanny just intonation tuning scheme, developing ideas from composers such as La Monte Young and Kali Malone. Around these drones, I weave field recordings, phasing canons of icy synthesiser tones, and even recordings of crinkling baking paper pitched down two octaves to create the sound of melting icebergs.

Liner notes

This album traces a journey taken in 2022 from Kanazawa, Japan to Edinburgh, Scotland. Due to the war in Ukraine, Russian airspace was closed and the flight left Japan eastwards and tracked around the North Pole. Lines plotted on the seat-back monitors told one story of a world being reshaped by conflict, while the view of retreating sea ice out of the window was testament to another narrative; one whose final chapter feels closer by the day.

The album was composed in just intonation, a tuning system based on perfect integer ratios rather than the compromises inherent in modern equal temperament. It makes extensive use of the Dream Machine mode on the Expert Sleepers disting EX synthesizer module. In addition, monome’s Teletype, and Mannequins’ Just Friends modules played a major part. Track 1 features field recordings made in Oyama-jinja, a Shinto shrine in Kanazawa, and on Tokyo’s public transport network.