Glen Scotia launches pioneering new music project ‘The Sound of Glen Scotia’ for this year’s Campbeltown Malts Festival

Award-winning whisky distillery, Glen Scotia, has unveiled details of its pioneering new music project, ‘The Sound of Glen Scotia’, which will be revealed at this year’s Campbeltown Malts Festival (23^rd – 24^th May 2023).

The project is an artistic collaboration between whisky writer Neil Ridley, folk singer-songwriter Jenny Sturgeon and music producer Dean Honer, who have created a new two-track musical journey using elements from around Campbeltown and the distillery to capture the essence of Glen Scotia.

The tracks will be unveiled at this year’s Malts Festival through an immersive exhibition deep inside the distillery’s atmospheric warehouse. With the room in complete darkness, a new music video, made especially for the project, will be screened on the casks in the warehouse while guests plug into a headset to listen to the A-side track, ‘Copper Heart’, with a dram in hand.

Shetland-based Jenny Sturgeon wrote and recorded vocals which capture observations of her time spent with the distillery team and in the town, soaking up the surrounding environment.

The track audio has been built using sounds of the distillery, including the banging of casks as drumbeats, mills running, soundbites of the distillery team’s conversations during production, microphones in casks of whisky, and the sounds of birds in the courtyard in a nod to the climate and unique natural environment of Scotland’s smallest whisky-making region.

Led by music producer, Dean Honer, the project used specialised audio equipment to accurately mimic the proximity of sounds. A binaural microphone, which resembles a featureless human head, was used to mimic the exact proximity of sounds as they were heard during recording. Bespoke-made hydrophones were submerged into casks of liquid, recreating a ‘suspended-in-time’ sound of the outside world, as the Glen Scotia whisky gently matured within.

These distillery sounds, gathered over several days, were then mixed with traditional acoustic instruments and Jenny’s lyrics.

Neil Ridley, whisky writer and musician, was in charge of artistic direction. He said: “With an extraordinary array of distinct sounds, frequencies, hums, knocks and rattles, Glen Scotia is quite the playground for the sound recordist. Imagine writing and recording a brand-new song where the lyrics and the instrumentation were heavily influenced by the distillery. This has been a lifelong dream of mine, with the vision of bringing to life the visceral thrill of visiting a working distillery, even if you were thousands of miles away, and we finally got the opportunity thanks to Glen Scotia.”

Jenny Sturgeon said: “My lyrics were inspired by conversations and observations of the distillery team and local historians who live and breathe the area. Hearing directly from the team – their shared vision of the distillery and what it means to them personally – was hugely inspiring.”

Nick Bradley, Brand Manager at Glen Scotia said: “Every year ahead of the Festival, Glen Scotia invites an artist or artists to collaborate with the team in Campbeltown, to see the distillery and our home through their eyes and artistic medium. Our greatest hope is this can give whisky lovers all over the globe a flavour of our home.

“I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to partner with these incredibly talented musicians and watch this extraordinary project come to life. It is a testament to the power of music and its ability to capture the essence of a place and its people, and the fusion of music and whisky is a truly unique way to bring our distillery and whisky-making region to life.”

The collaboration follows Glen Scotia and industry writer Becky Paskin’s ‘Whisky Experiment’ at last year’s Malts Festival and artistic collaboration ‘Spirit Safe’ with Alice Angus, as Glen Scotia continues to bring to life the senses and elements that define Campbeltown and its whisky heritage.

Those unable to attend the Festival and looking to hear the second track will be able to purchase a limited-edition vinyl from the Glen Scotia website, which will be available from the end of May alongside the festival.

The B-side track on the album, ‘The Sound of Glen Scotia’, is a 17-minute fully immersive experience. Depicting the sound of barley being delivered and the ethereal high-pitched song of the copper stills, the track features rhythmic elements provided by the sound of casks being opened, filling out the bass frequencies. The track features an extraordinary array of distinct sounds and a broad spectrum of tones.

Launched in 2008, the Campbeltown Malts Festival is a celebration of the region known as the ‘Victorian Whisky Capital of the World’ due to its illustrious past and the role whisky-making has played in the town for centuries.

This year the programme will be bigger than ever before with a jam-packed series of events and an opportunity to learn more about the world’s finest drams. As well as the immersive Sound of Glen Scotia experience, guests will have the opportunity to hear directly from Neil Ridley, Dean Honer, and Jenny Sturgeon in three ticketed talks and demonstrations over the day, accompanied by a special dram.

Glen Scotia’s full programme of events and tickets are available via its website: www.glenscotia.com

About Glen Scotia

Distiller Glen Scotia has been producing single malt whisky in Campbeltown since 1832 and is one of three surviving distilleries in Campbeltown.

Producing peated and non-peated whiskies, the distillery still maintains much of its original design, including the fermenters, the stillroom, and the dunnage warehouse dating from the 1830s.To this day, the distillery team follow in the footsteps of their founders, using traditional methods, carefully creating the subtly maritime Campbeltown style the brand has become world-famous for.

Recognition of Glen Scotia’s style and craftsmanship continues to be acknowledged globally.

• In 2021, Glen Scotia’s 25-Year-Old Single Malt whisky was awarded ‘Best In Show Whisky’ at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Over 3,800 entries across thirty-one categories were judged with Glen Scotia being awarded the overall winner across all countries and styles. Only seven months later, Glen Scotia was also named Scottish Whisky Distillery of the Year at the Scottish Whisky Awards 2021.
• In 2022, Glen Scotia’s Victoriana won Best In Class in the Distillers’ Single Malt Scotch – No Age Statement category at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
• In 2023, Glen Scotia won ‘Best Single Cask Single Malt’ at the World Whiskies Awards 2023 for a single cask bottling distilled in 2009 and aged for 13 years exclusively in a first-fill bourbon barrel.

 Twitter: @GlenScotiaMalts
Instagram: @glenscotiamalts
Facebook: @GlenScotiaWhisky

About the artists

Neil Ridley

Neil Ridley is an award-winning professional drinks writer, broadcaster, consultant, author, TV presenter and musician. With 15 years of drinks industry experience, he served as the editor-at-large for Whisky Magazine and Chairman of the World Whiskies Awards until 2016. He now contributes to The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, writes regularly for the internationally acclaimed Decanter magazine, and is a regular TV presenter on Channel 4 Sunday Brunch. He also continues to judge several high-profile global drinks competitions.

He is at the forefront of providing expertise and innovation in the alcoholic drinks world and in 2013 he was made a ‘Keeper Of The Quaich’, one of the highest accolades in the Scotch whisky industry. Neil has also been shortlisted four times for ‘Communicator Of The Year’ at the International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC).

His first book, co-written with Joel Harrison Distilled: A Guide To The World’s Best Spirits, was awarded ‘Best Drinks Book’ in The Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards in 2015. To date, it is the biggest-selling book globally on pan-spirits, now published in 14 different languages. His latest book, ‘60-second Cocktails’ is the no.1 bestseller in both the UK and the USA.

Jenny Sturgeon

Jenny Sturgeon is a Scottish singer and songwriter “who brings together the old and new with a rare skill” (R2 Magazine). Jenny’s music is rich with imagery and her songs are bound together by common threads of folklore, nature and people.

Jenny’s music has been played on BBC Radio Scotland, Radio 3, Radio 6 Music, Radio 2, and Radio Nan Gaidheal. She has been featured as artist of the week and performed live sessions for BBC Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk programme and BBC Radio 3. Jenny has also been on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.

Her album ‘The Living Mountain’ was nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Awards 2021, and in 2020 she won Best Acoustic at the Scottish Alternative Music Awards. In 2018 she was nominated Composer of the Year in the Scots Trad Music Awards.

Dean Honer

Dean is a music producer and composer. Owner of the mixing and mastering studio, The Bowling Green, Dean is a connector between artistic worlds with much of his work appearing on TV shows, films, adverts and he has even performed on Top of the Pops.

He is the producer and founding member of many iconic electronic music bands including  All Seeing I, I Monster, The Moonlandingz and The Eccentronic Research Council, which saw huge success in the late 1990s.

He has also worked as a producer for bands such as The Human League, Add N to X and Roisin Murphy. A top 10 chart star with ‘All Seeing I’, he has worked with various artists from Jarvis Cocker to Tony Christie, remixed Moby, mastered countless tracks and albums and even appeared as a credited producer on Britney Spears debut album.