Recently I was able to connect with Louise Quinn, from Gates Of Light, who has collaborated with producer/musician Finlay MacDonald in Glasgow, London-based producer and DJ Scott Fraser, producer and DJ Kid Loco in Paris, and film and art director Tim Saccenti in New York to create her latest video for “10,000 Years.” Gates Of Light will be releasing their next record, called Gates of Light II, and if you’re enjoying the new single you can check out pre-save options here.
Can you tell me more about the process of creating Gates of Light II? How did your personal circumstances influence the creative direction of the new album?
When I first started writing Gates Of Light II my marriage of many years had broken down leaving me traumatised and with two young twins to raise on my own; one who is autistic. Kramer had released the first Gates Of Light album on Shimmy-Disc and was a great support and encouraged me to write as a means of therapy. It was a real lifesaver in those initial weeks post-separation whilst I tried to make sense of what had happened and how I was going to cope on my own.
Initially I thought I would have to give up music; I just didn’t have time to do something so indulgent when my responsibilities were so great, but actually I couldn’t stop writing songs; a broken toy would loop around and I would be writing words and singing a melody over it; that song became Better Now and it was like a mantra that was helping put me back together.
Eventually songs were just spilling out of me and I needed to record them. The Glasgow indie scene is very small and I didn’t know where or who to turn to; who I could trust. I met Duglas T Stewart from the BMX Bandits on a train and he suggested I work with Finlay MacDonald; Fin had played with the Bandits, Teenage Fanclub and had his own electronic project Wor_kspace. I contacted Fin and we spoke on the phone; he just listened to me for about an hour and then encouraged me to get the ideas down on my phone.
So I would work at night and record voice notes and send them to Fin. Fin worked up these amazing electronic tracks and got a trusted musician and producer Jim McEwan to come over to my flat and record vocals on an amazing valve mic he had (apparently used by Joni Mitchell and made out of Russian submarines!). We didn’t have a lot of time whilst the kids were at nursery but Jim managed to get some great vocals down and then we uploaded them and shared them to the rest of the collective and then all of these amazing mixes and versions were being created in Glasgow by Fin, London by Scott Fraser and Paris by Kid loco.
What was it like working with artists like Kid Loco, Scott Fraser, and Finlay MacDonald? Can you describe the dynamics and chemistry you share in the studio?
I didn’t actually meet Fin in person until we played a gig together at St Lukes in Glasgow supporting Hi-fi Sean and David McAlmont last year. We both have family commitments and Fin is also a music teacher so working remotely suited both of us (even though he just lives across the road from me!). Fin is a really lovely person and very nurturing; he gave me the confidence to start writing again and really supported me through a lot of very difficult stuff.
Kid Loco I have known for many years and I have been to Paris many times to sing on his records; I have a lot of fond memories of time spent with Jean-Yves (Kid Loco) and his family. Again we worked remotely on this record but Jean-Yves very kindly offered my family shelter when we almost became homeless last year. We both share a love of sixties music and A Grand Love Story is a stone cold classic album from that trip-hop era. He can’t understand a word I say because of my Scottish accent but we communicate through music.
My first collaboration with Scott inspired the whole Gates Of Light Project; we met at The Berkeley Suite in Glasgow many years ago (we both come from East Kilbride – where The Jesus and Marychain also grew up) and ended up collaborating on a track which was remixed and released by the legendary Andrew Weatherall on his Birdscarer label. Andrew was a good friend and mentor to Scott. The track was called Together More and Andrew’s philosophy of music being able to transcend time and space was very pertinent during lockdown. Scott contacted me after having sat with the track for six years to tell me Andrew had remixed and was releasing it and it kind of blew my mind – I was thirty two weeks pregnant with the twins and a lot of Screamadelica was on our birthing playlist!
Art Director Tim Saccenti who has created the amazing glitch art at the helm of the Gates of Light releases along with his creative partner Dina Chang as Setta Studios also fed into the musical side of the project as I sent him early demos and we even spoke about creating a sci-fi film based on the Gates Of Light concept.
“10,000 Years” has a deeply personal backstory related to both grief and love. Can you walk me through the emotional journey behind writing this song and the story behind the concept of the music video?
In 2016, my ex-partner and I had a stillborn daughter called Freya; it’s a grief that never leaves you but as Nick Cave said there is something about grief and grieving that lets the light in and connects you to something much bigger than yourself. It was her birthday a couple of years ago which is always a difficult time but I was also grieving the breakdown of my marriage; that’s when 10,000 Years started forming; like a lot of the Gates Of Light songs it has a self-soothing quality and I guess that’s what I was doing. I was very isolated and very alone but music and songwriting were there for me in a way that no-one else was. My collaborators were part of that support and I cannot believe how much they stepped up during a time when my life felt like it was really just falling apart.
I was on Instagram and Scott had posted this electronic drone he was working on in his studio in London; it seemed to fit perfectly with the song I was writing so I dropped him a voice memo of me singing the song. He sent the track and I did three vocal takes with Jim McEwan in Solas Studios in Glasgow; Jim and I were amazed at the results; like it shouldn’t really work but it was really mystical in a way, really mesmerising and kind of did something to your brain.
We had little time to get a video together for it but I had just shot a video for another Gates Of Light track Advance with Uisdean Murray and asked if he could do something. My music video collaborations with Uisdean over the years have been numerous and shown at international film festivals including Cannes. I really enjoy working with Uisdean and cinematographer Ray Tallan and have a great amount of respect for both of them. Uisdean and I are both huge David Lynch fans and when he sadly passed and the internet was joyously flooded with David Lynch Uisdean saw a clip from Lost Highway of Patricia Arquette shot very simply with a flickering blue light effect. Due to time constraints we had to work remotely so I shot myself on my iphone whilst the kids were at school using my winter coat and clothes pegs for blackout and a spot light from our living room. It was a strangely cathartic experience and I started crying during the first take; I just sent it to Uisdean and he created this lyric visualiser which captures the song perfectly I think; an echo of human grief in the vastness of the cosmos.