“Memories of Drumadoon” – A Soundtrack for the Soul

“Memories of Drumadoon” by This Great Endeavour sounds exactly how you might picture sending a postcard from a windswept headland on the west coast of Scotland: calm, earthy, and deeply moving. Based on the Drumadoon Point on the Isle of Arran, the single is devoid of stomping hooks and showy production. Instead, the artists dip their toes into watery atmospheres, natural samples, a bit of field recording, and a great deal of spaciousness. A few seconds in, you’re surrounded by something both vibrant and serene. There are these incredibly soft but present details that layer themselves atop one another — the foghorn, the shrieks of oystercatchers, footsteps in pebbles on a stony beach — and each one is employed with such a light touch that you almost don’t realize they’re there. Each detail tugs on your sleeve to get just a little closer, to feel the wind against your cheek as you stare out at the water.

Abbey Drive Studios in Glasgow recorded the track, and the engineering for field recordings by Juan Pablo V happened in Buenos Aires, which seems bonkers but ends up making the production all the more warm. The thing that gets me though is how effectively they’ve incorporated field recordings and smooth, watercolour-like instrumental samples. There’s just something about the Uilleann bagpipes present in Memories of Drumadoon, even when it’s a tiny taste at the tail end of the track. It’s rich and quietly Scottish but not ostentatious in the slightest. A meditation. A song that’s just as much a love letter to a place as it is a musical project. It all has such a deep, careful consideration from the samples to the mixing process, you can tell there’s this deep relationship with the physicality of this specific place. It’s not concerned with getting radio play, it’s just concerned with making you feel a thing.

If you’re into this track, “Gustav Pluie” was dropped earlier in January and has that same deep well of feeling and quietly rising energy. They both share that thing that most popular music is missing in the current era: being in that quiet pocket of music that’s not trying to sell itself to you, doesn’t punch you in the face with passion and cleverness, just plays as background to your life and lets you feel however you want to feel. “Memories of Drumadoon” lets you breathe deep and remember that some places will forever be a part of you even when you leave them behind.

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