Kerrie J Robinson — Submerged EP bio

With nothing but a hydrophone and the surrounding landscape of the west coast of Scotland at her disposal, multi-instrumentalist and experimental musician Kerrie J Robinson has been collecting sounds from above and beneath the surface of the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

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.

Originally from Dorset, Robinson has always had a fascination with sound and her relationship with it has evolved over time; from studying classical piano at the age of four, to working in record shops and playing in bands throughout her late teens and early twenties, to the compositional, experimental, and improvised sounds she identifies with today. She is drawn to the unconventional, to music deemed different, weird, and new; from Gazelle Twin, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mica Levi, Suzanne Ciani, and Fatima Al Qadiri. In particular, the off kilter and pioneering sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s co-founder Daphne Oram and alumni Delia Derbyshire deeply resonate—their electronic creations and distortions influential to the plunge of Robinson’s underwater microphone, and the proceeding recordings which have been manipulated beyond recognition for her solo debut EP.

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 rippling, ice dripping, and waves thrashing 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 melting 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 will be 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 was framed and displayed at the Radiophonic Workshop by composer Daphne Oram. The label will focus on releasing and promoting music of female/female-identifying artists working in experimental electronic music. 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.

Listeners are warmly invited to submerge themselves in Robinson’s solo debut, and into the bodies of water from which the beats, melodies, and music have emerged.

‘We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies, which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We also have divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it, and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.’

–      Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627)