Searching Erskine - Ambient Album + Artbook + Essay + Exhibition
“This gorgeous sonic tribute to the abandoned island of Vallay, where the artist’s grandmother once lived, is filled with folk memory and longing.” — Jude Rogers / The Guardian, 'Folk Album of the Month'
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Searching Erskine is a 12-track album and multimedia repsonse to the uninhabited island of Vallay, which lies approximately two miles off the northwest coast of North Uist, The Outer Hebrides. Musically, the album blurs the boundaries between ambient, modern-folk and contemporary classical, and the accompanying book features visual artwork from Sood alongside artists Emile Kees, Rosalind Blake and Meg Rodger. These sit alongside Sood's introductory essay, poems and extensive notes exploring the making of the album, which features contributions from musicians including Rachel Sermanni (guitar and vocals), Alastair Smith (synths, organs, tape loops and sonifications) and Alice Allen (cello). An exhibition of the artworks featured in the book and a new sound installation and film by Sood featured at the Taigh Chearsabhagh Arts Centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist, from March until May 2022. Initially released via Blackford Hill Audio as a 64-page book with digital download, a limited edition 12” vinyl was released in 2024.
Searching Erskine'is the result of the channelling of voices, original music, oral histories, spectral sounds, and field recordings from the island. It is a multimedia project about ruins, land, memory, and the intersections in between. In 1905, antiquarian, industrialist, and pioneering archaeologist Erskine Beveridge built a Georgian mansion on Vallay in order to excavate prehistoric duns and finish his book North Uist. The mansion gradually fell into disrepair after Erskine’s son, George Beveridge, drowned in 1944 while crossing the tidal strand, leaving no heir nor work for the small population of crofters, groundsmen, and housekeepers who departed the island shortly after. Arun’s grandmother (gaga), Katie MacNaughton, was one of the last islanders to leave, and these song tapestries locate his family story in a palimpsest of cultural, natural, and historical layers that comprise the now uninhabited island. Album reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Electronic Sound, Caught By The River, Into Creative, and Further Dot among others.
