The Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award is an ambitious new national prize established to reward and promote the diversity and creativity of music and art in Scotland. > READ MORE

The Album (Duncan Chisholm)

As a listener to music I use great albums as an escape, 45 minutes of cohesive, emotional work that hopefully runs deep and affects me in a positive way. I am rarely moved by 4 minute sound bites, however I am always optimistic that they are an advert for a greater piece of work, which inevitably they often are.

For me, music affects in the same way as light and colour.  It shapes human emotions just as a sunrise or a stormy day would. The real joy of making an album in the studio is the process of working from nothing, essentially having a blank canvas and then building colour, either with swathes of sound or very intimate moments where the silence between notes is as important as the notes themselves. It’s a delicate process in the construction of an album, each track is deserving of its own space but the work as a whole requires fluidity and cohesiveness. As an instrumentalist and working without words I require the 45 minutes within my albums to create mood and understanding, to work sonically in differing dimensions and most important of all to inspire the listener to imagine. This is why the album is an essential medium for me to be able to tell the story that I want to tell and fundamental to me as an artist.

Duncan Chisholm