Have you ever sat and really thought about a Snowflake??…

Definition states..

‘Snowflakes are delicate arrangements of frozen ice crystals which fall from the sky through the Earth’s atmosphere… Complex formations emerge as the flakes fall, varying in size and shape, each single one is completely unique in it’s structure. They appear white despite being made of clear ice due to the reflection of a whole spectrum of light by their small gem-like crystal facets.’

Pretty incredible don’t you think?…

Maybe at the end of some sort of hugely elaborate drunken spiritual hypothesis… we’d all decide that people were actually just snowflakes?…

Each one of us beginning as a unique and delicately fragile formation, beautiful and different in both shape and size, we float gently to the earth from beyond the sky, gradually building colour and illusion to disguise and cloak our cold and vulnerable transparency, our short fleeting moment of fluttering twinkling life, falling through time… we melt into the earth… as the water from which we were formed.

Well… It was just a thought…

Although people believe far more magical stories on how we got here…

I like my snowflake idea…

I was sat one freezing cold afternoon last winter in a house on the back end of Skye, playing around with a song i’d written… thinking about a ‘Snowflake’…

Videos shouldn’t be too planned I don’t think… The idea for the video for ‘Hollow Bones’ came to me almost by accident as I sat staring at a weird shadow projecting from a lamp in the corner of my living room one night. When I started work on the animation I decided there and then that I’d only create videos that happened naturally without too much premeditation and more importantly that meant something to me.

With no other plan than that, a sailing trip to the Shiants randomly produced an experience I couldn’t have planned if i’d tried and I remember knowing the moment I stood on the bow of Raingoose with my camera, surrounded by layers of weaving porpoises that somehow I’d just been given something very special and should use it wisely.

In a continued path of fate.. or luck more probably, during mixing ‘Michelle (Seashell)’, events unfolded where I found myself staring at footage of St Kilda from 1929 with the final mix coincidentally playing in my headphones at the same time. Something clicked immediately and I knew i’d have to find a way to access and edit what I was seeing into a visual story to go with the track.

The point is… sometimes the best way to find something you are looking for is to not realise you were even looking for it in the first place.

You can read a lovely piece on both the song and video for Michelle by Glasgow bloggers Podcart HERE.

This month on Sunday the 29th ‘Snowflake’ will be released.

No video seems to have materialised this time and i’m glad. I’d never intended to do a video each month anyway, it just sort of happened.  The idea of overkill doesn’t agree with me nor does sticking a video up for fear of losing anyone’s attention, the track should be able to handle that job on it’s own.

There’s plenty more viewing left in the videos i’ve made up to now and far too much music left needing finished to allow time for much else, this time the visuals are down to the mind of the listener which is an overlooked and far more interesting concept.

The journey from Glasgow to the Western Isles is a well travelled path for all Hebrideans, these days mostly by road, not by sea…
The trip north is always one where you feel you’re chasing the path to the edge of where the world might end…

Licensed kindly by the Scottish Screen Archive, the video for ‘Michelle (Seashell)’ captures an incredible journey from 1929, leaving from the banks of the Clyde though the West Coast, all the way across the haunting seas to St Kilda.
I’m gonna leave it at that and let the film say the rest… Enjoy the trip…

**Password Now Expired**
This evening at 8pm, as a little thanks for your support so far, a password will me sent to all mailing list members allowing an advanced preview of the video for upcoming track ‘Michelle (Seashell)’, out next Saturday.

The password will be valid for 24 hours and can be entered in the box above to watch the film.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to add yourselves yet… just pop your email address in the ‘Mailing List’ box over on the right hand side of this website and you’ll be included in the mail out tonight!

Hope you like it!

A few people have asked why the tracks are being released one per month?…

Firstly and quite simply, they aren’t all finished yet…

Secondly and more importantly, this initial collection of tracks is about releasing Siiga from the confines of an idea, patiently and carefully in a completely free and creative headspace…

The people who’ve come by, bought the tracks, shared the videos, told others about it, left lovely comments and basically just take the time to let the music into their lives… in whatever sense that happens… are what counts.

It’s all a small part of a bigger picture… and it’s great to have you aboard…

‘Michelle (Seashell)’ out 31/03/12.

As someone born and raised in the Hebrides I spent my childhood looking outward from the islands…

My grandmother came from Scarp, a tiny island which is tucked in off the back of Harris with a single peak in its centre, which when you climb gives you an endless view of the Atlantic ocean with little between you and Canada other than… St Kilda or ‘Hiort’ (Gaelic).. possibly one of the most incredible places you could ever imagine…

This month i’ve been allowed a beautiful opportunity to illustrate my own connection to the Hebrides by being given permission to use some of the most beautiful footage of the Western Isles i’ve ever seen on screen for the next Siiga video… and possibly the last for the next short while…

I’ve been lost, mesmerised for hours in the silent reels of film sent through to me… Footage from 1929 played out on my monitor like a window through time into a faded world, which if I hadn’t known first hand it existed would wonder if it ever really had.

‘Michelle (Seashell)’ will be track number 3 for March and will be released at the end of this month.

“I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.”

Bernard Moitessier (Vagabond of the South Seas)

Buy ‘Fall Apart’ HERE

I’ve been buried away into the small hours trying to finish something a little different to go along with this one…

The cover is the mast of a beautiful sailing boat named ‘Raingoose’… (more about her another time)..

I took the picture at about 2am, a rain storm was edging in through a full moon while we were moored within the safety of the Shiants….

I remember a tension in the air, electricity waiting to burst through the night sky…

Every time I look back at this picture I can feel my heart begin to race…

‘Fall Apart’ will be released this month… on 26/02/2012

A lot of people have asked if and how I did the animation for ‘Hollow Bones’…

The first answer is yes..

I’d rather not spoil the curiosity of how, but what I will say is it took lots of black card, scalpel blades, a home-made lightbox (‘modified’ coffee-table really) and thousands of images..

You can read some very kind words said about it by Glasgow PodcArt by clicking HERE.

A huge thanks to you guys who’ve bought the track so far, it means so much… this is all home grown and your support is what will keep it going..

For anyone who’s missed it you can buy the download HERE

it’s just 99p ..

…and to quote a description I spotted someone giving it online..

‘Feels magical. Like some opiate fueled fairy tale.’
 

It’s a weird thing letting go of a song, at least I think it is….

You spend so long in the safety of being the only person listening to it that it becomes harder to let go of… Once you do though it’s a nice feeling..

I finished this track last year, recorded and mixed in one day… I’d never managed to do that before…

The animation took me much longer…

You can buy it here for just 99p… Hope you like it…