Simon Scott

‘Long Drove’, the title of Scott’s first edition for Room40, is a location in the Fens close to the home of British composer, multi-instrumentalist and mastering engineer Simon Scott. It is the connective pathway between two nature reserves, called Holme Fen and New Decoy, and both sites are part of a habit restoration project called The Great Fen Project and is close to where Scott grew up as a child. This area first became a location of compositional inspiration over a decade ago, when Scott created 'Below Sea Level' on 12k (later reissued on Touch). His return to the Fens has produced a number of new works, presented here on ‘Long Drove’, that are intimate sonic narratives of place and rural trauma.
 
‘Long Drove’ is a site-specific sound study which shifts the Anthropocene discourse from spectatorship to musical participation, accountability, and creative engagement. The near future of the Fens, with concerns of further subsidence and threat of flooding, remains a palpable concern. One can almost hear Scott’s thought processes within these five compositions, of what the Fens would sound like if submerged and flooded by water again, returning to its original marshland state as a result of climate change, as the field recordings dissipate and unfurl with melancholic washes of decaying tape loops and digitally processed textures of Fenland sonorities.