Kirkwall-born composer Erland Cooper has always loved creating music in hidden places and has been known to go to great lengths to do just that.
Even breaking and entering the music classroom at Stromness Academy.
But perhaps it is not really a crime if he simply “borrowed” the key from his dad – the deputy head at the time.
Erland recalled while his friends were playing football during secondary school, he was breaking into the music room completely content in “geeky solitude”.
While the janitor eventually “dobbed him in it”, Erland’s curiosity about music continued.
Speaking from his studio in London, he said: “I was working out how to understand triads on the piano…and how to create and I was doing it all on my own.
“I still work in secret, hidden away places. And then I open the door to collaboration and let people in – whether it’s people or the natural world.”
Burying only album copy: Genius or ‘muppet’?
Feeling the weight of his title as a “nature’s songwriter”, Erland asked himself how he could not write about nature but actually with the soil itself.
His resulting choice of collaborator hit headlines three years ago when the composer announced the decision to create a new album, delete all the digital files and then bury the remaining tape in Orkney.
It was a decision that saw him branded an adventurous genius or a “muppet”.
The album named Carve the Runes then Be Content with Silence aims to celebrate the natural world and commemorate Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown.
Or as Erland and his four brothers knew him, their former neighbour who would often be the victim of their chap, door, run schemes.
Erland also wanted to work on something which looked at value and patience.
He explained: “In this world of instant gratification where you can have anything you want at any time, what’s precious to us anymore?
“I was also asking how I could write across a timeline, and collaborate with myself over a timeline, which is quite a rare thing to do.
“It evokes patience, growth and understanding of yourself and the project.”
‘Hope people see the value’
The musician was surprised in October 2022 when he got the call from “the most wonderful” Orkney couple Victoria and Dan Rhodes who told him they had found the album – buried with a violin and biscuit tin – following his cryptic clues.
While Erland was quick to delete the digital files three years ago and then head to the pub, once it was found, the tape became “the most precious thing in the world”.
Honouring the idea of patience and nature, the tape was left to dry out naturally in record shops around Scotland before it was finally mounted on a machine in his studio.
Joking that the tape machine had plant life on it now, Erland said he has re-scored the whole album to sound exactly as it does after its time in the elements.
Ahead of performing it for the first time on his tour, Erland did not give any indication as to what had changed.
But he admitted feeling a mix of exhilaration and trepidation: “The world will soon know what’s on the tape, especially those that come to the concert.
“I have a nervousness, of course, but that’s natural.
“I hope people value not just what it means to create but what it means to value each other…whether it’s with something you love, musically or artistically, or whether it’s the natural world.
“Explore, be curious…Do the things that you want to do. Because three years goes by with a click of a finger.”
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