Ruby Colley - Overheard (2022)

Overheard - An exploration of folk music, improvisation & nature through the lens of our modern world.

In ‘Overheard’, Ruby seeks to examine the space between human presence/structure and nature from the domestic (her garden in lockdown), a dilapidated train depot, to a church yard in a thunder storm.
Using field recordings as launch pads for the work, their place within the album weaves from centre stage to sonic background. All the while, Violin, Double Bass, Oud and electronics finds its way through the spaces. Ruby’s violin style traces a journey from baroque (Bach being her first love), contemporary classical, to folk and improvisation. This album is an integration process of the various musical paths she’s explored over her 20-year career. This integration finds its way into the field recordings also... by integrating her domestic life as a mother, to the local family walks taken during lockdown. Rather than edit and discard sounds in the attempt to find something refined, she allows the minutiae and the flaws to enter.

Overheard seeks to reflect the world we live in now, not an idealised form of nature, which can often dominate our attempts to confront the climate catastrophe. Ruby feels climate awareness starts in our back yard and this music seeks to tell this story through the lens of domestic life, and the overlooked details - the gap in the hedge.


“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience
it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody
meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67)