I’m excited to have a Featured Artist Exhibition at Glasgow Print Studio. 🙏😊
A Kind of Scoring
Preview – 5th March 2026, all welcome!
The exhibition runs from 6th – 28th March.
More information at: Glasgow Print Studio Exhibitions
A Kind of Scoring presents a series of abstract landscapes that evoke experiences of sound and listening – part of a body of work I’m continuing to develop over the next few months. I’m grateful to Glasgow Print Studio for this opportunity to share the work.
I’m delighted to be performing at Radiophrenia Lost in Transmission #3 – a special event with Radio Atlas. I’ll be performing a solo set with new film material.
Wednesday 25th February 2026 at 7pm (doors 6.45pm)
GMAC Cinema – 5th Floor, Trongate 103, Glasgow
Free but ticketed – available through Eventbrite
From Radiophrenia – An evening of subtitled radio works drawn from the Radio Atlas archives. Veteran radio producer and the brains (and ears) behind the organisation, Eleanor McDowall will be there in person to introduce the programme. For this edition we also have a special live performance from Glasgow based composer and sound artist, Nichola Scrutton
I’m pleased to share new album Scenes from the Blue – available from 6th March 2026 on Bandcamp.
The album is available as CD and Digital Download.
Link: Scenes from the Blue at Bandcamp
While Bandcamp is a good option, this album is also streaming across platforms of choice from 20th March 2026.
Link: https://ffm.to/nicholascrutton-scenesfromtheblue
Creative Scotland and Tramway Glasgow for supporting this work.
New single Scene 7 Cyan from my forthcoming album Scenes from the Blue has now been released across all platforms and is available for streaming. Find your preferred platform here:
https://ffm.to/nicholascrutton-scene7cyan
The single is also available at Bandcamp. The album is currently available for pre-orders, and the single is instant access when pre-ordering CD or Digital Download. The album is releasing on 6th March 2026. Listen and pre-order options at:
https://nicholascrutton.bandcamp.com/album/scenes-from-the-blue
Track recorded, composed and mixed by: Nichola Scrutton
Mastered by: Jim McEwan, Bark Bark Dog Studios
Cover design: Pascal Blua
With artwork by Nichola Scrutton
Many thanks to Creative Scotland for supporting this work.
I’m currently working on a new album and I’m very grateful for support from the Creative Scotland Open Fund.
And many thanks to Tramway Glasgow for a Studio residency in June 2025.
More info to come – the release will be out in 2026. Sign up to the newsletter for updates.
I’m delighted to share that Memory Dream Encounter 2 programme will have it’s premiere broadcast on Radiophrenia on Thursday 10th April 2025 at 9.45 am. Listen at radiophrenia.scot
The composers/artists and works in programme order are:
Clara de Asis – Compass
Go Sing – Casual Friday
Liew Niyomkarn – Third Place
Nichola Scrutton – Hues
Ryoko Akama – Sounding
Memory Dream Encounter 2 is a second series of micro-commissions that I curated in 2023 following the success of the first series in 2021. The invite was to produce a short sound work – up to 3 mins – as a free response to this image I took during a residency I had a Tramway Glasgow in 2023. Many thanks to everyone for being involved. Enjoy!
Micro-commissions supported by Creative Scotland
My limited edition etching Windborne (soundscape) has been selected for the Royal Society of British Artists | Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. The etching was created and printed at the Glasgow Print Studio, Scotland.
The exhibition runs from 26th Feb – 8 March 2025 from 10 am – 5 pm.
More info about the exhibition at: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/exhibitions-events/royal-society-british-artists-annual-exhibition-2025
Radio Art Zone – curated and edited by Sarah Washington
“Radio Art Zone explores the central themes and techniques of artist-made radio, emerging from over 20 years of practice in the field by a multitude of artists. It is a reflection of the world’s largest exhibition of radio art, also title Radio Art Zone, a project by the artist duo Modile Radio (Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann) in collaboration with Luxembourg community station Radio ARA, which broadcast for 100 days as part of the program of the European Capital Culture Esch 2022.”
Book Cover, Radio Art Zone, published by Hatje Cantz
I’m thrilled to have two drawings and a micro-essay included in this new book Radio Art Zone, curated & edited by Sarah Washington. The experimental publication contains a stunning array of visual & textual contributions from artists worldwide.
The book is available in bookshops, online, and direct from the publisher at:
Delighted that recordings made via the internet during lockdown 2021 by Ali Robertson and me have been released by the consistently wonderful Chocolate Monk.
The always excellent Chocolate Monk has turned this collaborative effort into a limited edition of 60 limited edition CD-Rs with gorgeous artwork by Karen Constance. You can get them at: https://chocolatemonk.co.uk/available.html
“The last train is at 11:30pm and I wouldnae recommend the night bus. It’ll be full of Lothians troglodytes, Cumbernauld carbuncles and folks what like their improv idiomatic. Best hop in our taxi. It willnae be cheap and, with two drivers pulling in opposite directions on the same wheel, you’ll be unsure which way is up let alone which is East or West. Ensure you’re wearing your seat belt on this tour of the Scottish Central Belt as your escorts are predisposed to unleashing belters for strings, gobs & kerfuffle and you’ll get pure pelters if you dinnae subscribe to their version of the Highway Code.”
New album Interzone was released on Nonclassical label on 15th June 2023, and is currently available in CD and digital formats.
https://nicholascrutton.bandcamp.com/album/interzone
The Interzone series of tracks on the album were composed with voice, field recordings and archive materials by Nichola Scrutton in her studio, then mixed and mastered by Jim McEwan of Bark Bark Dog Studios. The second second series of voice tracks were recorded live in Solas Sound Studios by Jim McEwan, and then mixed and mastered by Jim at Bark Bark Dog Studios.
Cover art: Nichola Scrutton
Interzone has been supported by the PRS Foundation Open Fund for Music Creators, Creative Scotland and Nonclassical.
The Night Vision album is now available to buy on Bandcamp in both limited edition CD and digital formats.
https://nicholascrutton.bandcamp.com/album/night-vision
Night Vision is a project I’m working on through 2023, and it has several iterations. At the core of Night Vision is a large body of text written in the middle of the night lying down in a semi-conscious state over a two-year period – a very different approach for me as a composer and artist.
On the album, excerpts are performed by five vocalists in chronological order, set in a soundscape I composed with ensemble voices and my own voice/studio recordings.
Vocal performers on the release are:
Alison Peebles, Louise Montgomery, Nalini Chetty, Ian Spink and Mairi Morrison.
The live voices were recorded by Jim McEwan at Solas Sound Studios. All tracks were mixed and mastered by Jim McEwan at Bark Bark Dog Studios.
Many thanks to Sarah Praill for the cover design, which includes a few drawings/marks from the original journals.
Night Vision is supported by Creative Scotland.
I now have a Bandcamp page. I set it up during lockdown and am just coming back to it now. I’m looking forward to adding new sounds soon. Here’s a link to follow and be notified about releases – many thanks.
Dream Stream was commissioned by Radio Art Zone as part of their 100-day programme inviting 100 artists to create 22-hour long radio works for European Capital of Culture at Esch 2022, Luxembourg. https://radioart.zone
Dream Stream weaves together field recordings, voice, fragments of text, visualisations, stories, performance and archive materials in a sonic contemplation of inner / outer landscapes. The sound of water is a thread across the whole duration. From that constantly shifting ‘surface’, various other sound worlds emerge and recede in a transient dream-like encounter.
In case it’s of interest, I have a Mailing List for occasional news updates – Join Mailing List
Many thanks indeed to Sarah, Knut and all at Radio Art Zone.
Artwork © Nichola Scrutton
I’m thrilled to say that I have been awarded Creative Scotland funding for the Night Vision project over 2022-23.
As part of a general website overhaul, I have temporarily removed background information, credits and plans for Night Vision so I can update all the details.
In the meantime, I’ll be posting news about select performances and a recording, to be released first on Bandcamp in early April and then across all music platforms on 28th April so please do connect / follow for updates. Many thanks.
Many thanks indeed to everyone who has supported Night Vision.
In another strand of research that emerged during Night Vision R&D in 2021, I curated a series of micro-commissions. I created a series of abstract images, photographing fragments of drawings. Those images served as a prompt, a connecting point, a spring board for dialogue.
Under the umbrella title, Memory Dream Encounter, I invited composers/artists Ruth Wiesenfeld, Elisabetta Senesi, Dafna Naphtali, Julia Drouhin and Claire Docherty to create miniature sound compositions in response to the prompts. On 31st August 2021, the six composers met in a virtual gathering to listen together, and discuss the creative process.
Radiophrenia 2022
Subsequently I edited the works into a programme that was broadcast on Radiophrenia at 9pm on 13th February 2022.
The programme in order was:
Claire Docherty – Pulse dream fragment For Una MacGlone (bass) & Emma Roche (flute) (3’23)
Dafna Naphtali- Striations (3′)
Elisabetta Senesi – Under the Surface (3’50)
Julia Drouhin – Mer4 (3’50)
Nichola Scrutton – Gestures (3’44)
Ruth Wiesenfeld – the wool from which the ribbons were made (3’54)
The micro-commissons were supported by Creative Scotland.
Zoë Strachan and I first performed Salt Cellar as a live-to-air broadcast on Radiophrenia, 11th February 2022, in the Creative Lab at the CCA Glasgow.
What is a prompt? It’s an inciting, a bringing forth, an augury, an urge, a bringing to light. In this live to broadcast performance, Nichola Scrutton and Zoë Strachan employ a cootie catcher (also known as a salt cellar) to provoke a series of discreet but interlinked improvisations based on texts, photographs and physical objects. Thus they seek to enact an archaeology of embodied memory within the palimpsest of a time-limited performance space.
Zoë and I collaborate to make sound art/experimental radio combining newly written and found text, composed sound, field recordings, found sound, voice and improvisation.
Two of my sketchbook drawings have joined the Berlin-based Fleeting Archive at Towards Sound. Many thanks to Ruth Wiesenfeld.
More information: http://www.towardssound.org/
I am delighted to have produced some new drawings for the cover of tape / digital album River . Pathway . Static – at Colliding Lines. Release date is Monday 19th July 2021. More info and link for tape purchase at Colliding Lines (which includes a digital version). The digital version is also available at Colliding Lines Bandcamp
Colliding Lines are also broadcasting on Resonance Extra – info and listening links at #18 Nettles and Chalklines.
Lovely to receive this book Restless Explorations in the post – Magnetic North celebrating 21 years. Congratulations! The book contains details of all their work & commissions by artists they have collaborated with.
I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution. I feel very fortunate to have had Rough Mix Residency support for my first shared exploration of the Night Vision materials in 2019.
The commissioned image is called On Route and re-presents ideas from that development.
Limited Edition copies are available at the Magnetic North website
Zoë Strachan and I continue our exploration of performing live experimental radio artwork. Up Closeness is a dialogue between two green urban spaces, a close look at the local. An attempt to find small connections amid the dislocation from everyday life. Field recordings and voice sounds are combined with found and composed text to animate distinct temporal spaces. Live improvisation and embedded writing practice enact a mimetic re-inhabiting of space.
We first performed Up Closeness as a live broadcast at Radiophrenia Glasgow on 20th November 2020 in CCA Glasgow., in the hour before lockdown. Here’s a clip…
Necessary Notes: A Vocal Response – solo performance as part of the Stolen Voices album launch on 8th February 2020.
“Nichola Scrutton is, as ever, an absolute wonder- her voice can disarm, charm and bewitch….She takes the listener into otherwordly realms, an uncertain space between sleep and consciousness.” (The Tempohouse)
Read the full review by Lorna Irvine.
The album launch was part of a creative research project by Rebecca Collins and Johanna Linsley – more here. The event forms part of ‘The Sonic Study Series: Act I Sonic Practice’ and is a pop-up event for the Festival of Creative Learning 2020, University of Edinburgh. Many thanks to Rebecca and Johanna for the invitation. More info about the event at CCA Stolen Voices.
The Dwelling Series is a triptych of vocal works. Multiple concepts arising from the notion of the title Dwelling gave rise to an interactive process of improvising and recording with MAXMSP, through which I sought to explore a sense of ‘inhabiting’ the work. As inspiration for generating improvised material under this complex umbrella concept of ‘dwelling’ I used three general metaphors to articulate events or states: dust (nature), cycle (flow/journey) and echo (memory).
The compositional process consisted of creating successive vocal improvisations, which were merged together, fully intact, after each improvisation was captured. Manipulation of the captured improvisations was strictly limited to the editing of gestures and textures in time and space to enhance or magnify relationships/conflicts that emerged by chance as each layer was added.
(i) Dwelling/In Dialogue: studio composition (17′).
(ii) Dwelling/Encounters: pre-composed sound and live performance, in which two live performers merged and improvised with a pre-composed soundtrack projected through multiple loud speakers. Swiss vocalist Céline Hänni and I undertook a short intensive residency to explore extended technique vocal improvisation that culminated in the final performance. (12’30). Listen
(iii) Dwelling/In Reflection: live interactive solo performance (18′).
Zoë Strachan and I created Rays & Correlations for a live broadcast from the Radiophrenia studio on 15th May 2019.
Inspired by the patterns of cosmic ray interactions in a cloud chamber, we imagine the myriad signals and attempts at communication that might enter a sphere and intersect, cluster, miss or fade away. Rays & Correlations is a voice-focused improvised performance with layers of interactive soundscape.
The listener is invited to find a thread to hold onto amid interweaving sparse and dense streams of words and evocations – and to decide whether the sound space is literal, as inside a kind of radome, or metaphorical – representing any individual consciousness trying to make sense of human connection.
When Night Comes was a solo performance created in dialogue with Wendy Kirkup’s film from a score (2017). In the film I perform Berio’s Sequenza III for solo voice. After Wendy’s films were selected to be screened at the 5th Edition of the Beton 7 Festival in Athens, Greece in 2018, I was invited to perform at the opening as a response to the film prior to the screening on the opening night of the festival. My improvised performance drew inspiration and gestures from both my knowledge of Berio’s score and the compositional and material aesthetic of the film itself. The title is a play on a fragment of text from Berio’s score – “before night comes”.
Zoë Strachan and I first produced Static Flux as a live studio broadcast for Radiophrenia in 2017. The work was then selected for a live performance at Hidden Door Festival 2018.
Static Flux focuses on out-of-time memory states, and how they can be both static and in flux. We are interested in exploring narrative and time through chance encounters with remnants, fragments and the ephemera of past lives. Metaphors for our endeavour include the remnants found in second-hand bags and the pockets of clothing, or in notes scribbled on the back of black and white photographs. There is a melancholy air to these things, but as with any kind of haunting, also the potential for fear, and for deeper connections with our own sense of mortality.
A Sura Medura exhibition is running from 21st April to 19th May 2017 at The Briggait in Glasgow. The exhibition includes a range of work by artists who have been artist-in-residence at Sura Medura in Sri Lanka.
Wave Shift, a new work made in collaboration with artist and illustrator Natasha Russell, is premiered as part of the Sura Medura exhibition. Read more about Wave Shift
Wave Shift was originally an experimental audiovisual collaboration with artist and illustrator Natasha Russell in response to the ideas and situations we encountered on the UZ Arts Sura Medura Residency in Sri Lanka. Natasha and I were in residence from October – December 2016, along with Sumit Sarkar and other visiting artists. Following the installation I re-worked Wave Shift into a stand alone composition.
During our post-residency collaboration, Natasha and I were interested in the way an understanding of the experience of a place shifts over time, between people, even at the drop of a hat. We decided to weave decaying memories, slippery facts and shifting folklores through sound and print to form a portable set that melts place and atmosphere into an imaginary landscape.
Integrating with the structure and printed visual landscape with the set, my Wave Shift audio was projected into the space as an immersive, abstract, evocative soundscape. Source materials for the work included a selection of field recordings captured during the residency and vocal sound recordings. Both the main thread of sound that underpinned the work, composed with a series of hydrophonerecordings, and the form, which unfolds as a series of wave-like emergences, draw on myriad notions of water as a bridge between real and fictional landscapes.
The installation was exhibited in 2017 at Sura Medura Exhibition, The Briggait, Glasgow and then Summerhall, Edinburgh
The final stage of our residency was focused on preparing for our Moving Out event. The other artists involved were Natasha Russell, Sumit Surkar, Samson Ogiamien, and Rose Staff. On the day, we were thrilled to have a big local crowd join us, and delighted that many people came down from the Colombo Biennale and the University Faculty of Visual and Performing Arts to join us for some or all of the time.
Overall, the day at Sunbeach was a wonderful combination of visual art, sound, sculpture, video, performance, people, food, beer, Arrack sour, sea, sand, laughing, chatting, sharing…and cake (what a fabulous day for a birthday!). In our exhibition, which combined some finished elements and work-in-progress, my sound work Sabda saha Pintura was available as a headphone installation.
The title Sabda saha Pintura means sound and picture in Sinhalese – through much discussion this seemed to be the most apt translation for the collage idea I was working with in the piece. Exploring differences in the English/Sinhalese languages was very intriguing – how or in what way metaphors or concepts translate, for example, sound, soundscape, landscape, environment.
During the afternoon an audiovisual tuk tuk tour was running – a collaboration between Natasha (Russell) and me. Three people at a time could hop into Sudu’s tuk tukand take a short round trip to visit Natasha’s work in local shops accompanied by my soundtrack.
The soundtrack combined recordings I gathered from those shopkeepers introducing themselves and their businesses, shop sounds, etc – the general store, jewellers, barbers, a fruit and veg stall. I also recorded an introduction to the tour in Sinhalese, with pronunciation help from folk at Sunbeach. Big thanks to Sudu and Chinthaka for running the tours.
Early evening, I accompanied Samson Omiagien with some live vocals for his performance piece with sculpture, which we had rehearsed in the lead up to the event. The evening finished with a fantastic Sri Lankan curry banquet.
Big thanks to Neil and all at UZ Arts, Chaminda, Chathura, Hasantha, Kari and all at Sunbeach, Maria and Jack, my fellow artists-in-residence, everyone I met.
Sabda saha Pintura is a sound collage composed on site during the six-week Sura Medura residency with UZ Arts in Sri Lanka using a selection of field recordings captured early in the residency. Repetition and fast cut edits try at the same time to capture something of the sensory experience on arrival in Hikkaduwa and reveal detail in a dense sound world. Sabda saha Pintura had its first airing as a headphone installation at Moving Out for the Colombo Art Biennale in November 2016.
