GLASGOW indie icons Belle and Sebastian have shared the two-part collaborative audio-visual piece on their experience of self isolation, title ‘Protecting the Hive’.
This project collates lyrics contributed by fans, about their thoughts and feelings while in self isolation, bringing the shared experience together into a collaborative pieces of music. The first of these is an audio-visual piece narrated by Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch and friend of the band Alessandra Lupo, accompanied by a video by Kenny MacLeod of an aerial view of a deserted sunlit Glasgow.
The second instalment, coming on Friday April 24th, is a work-in-progress demo recording based on the same contributions, which the band are set to share as audio files, encouraging fans to record their own versions of the track.
Speaking to fans, Murdoch said, “Ok, I’ve got an idea. I come up with lots of tunes but the band aren’t around just now, and I rely on them to turn them into pop. How about we make a tune together using remote technology? Send me a few sentences or a paragraph, I’ll try to funnel those words into a song, then I’ll record an acoustic version of it and bounce it back to you. Then it’s up to you to do what you want to do with it! You have GarageBand, Zoom, whatever. A collaboration. Someone might be good with tech. Someone might want to sing it. Can you put a rhythm to it? Someone add some organ, some flute! At this point it’s out of my hands.” The parts of the song will be made available to download on Friday.”