When These Rocks Were Still Young

Welcome to the home page for When These Rocks Were Still Young, a film featuring music inspired by Scotland’s incredible landscapes. This page is designed to give you a bit more of a behind-the scenes experience of how this project was born, and came together. It also, therefore, functions as an online programme for the film itself. The film is currently being considered for screening at a number of film festivals, and will be publicly available to watch in its entirety from early 2023.

About the film

Webb Street Studios: This project was the definition of collaboration for us as filmmakers. It’s a rarity that we get to come up with film concepts as the music is being composed - it was like a dance that we three did for over a year. That meant we had the pleasure of hearing Oliver’s music from initial sketches, through to his rough mixes, and then to the final audio that is now in the film. It was a wonderful challenge for us to come up with ideas for each movement that would honour the landscapes as well as Oliver’s responses to them.

We also wanted to acknowledge Oliver’s initial plan to tour these movements live somehow. Facing the question of how do we bridge the two worlds of live shows and film, that’s where the digital and overhead projector came in. It was an interactive way to bring the landscapes into the indoor, performative space.

Oliver himself kept a journal when he was on the trip, and when he shared what he had written with us, it felt like we had gained a deeper insight into the origin of this project. And so by sprinkling documentary-like elements throughout, we wanted to create another layer of understanding for the audience. An intimate moment, almost a getting-to-know Oliver through this window into his train of thoughts.

Oliver Cox: Part performance, part documentary, this film is woven around nine new pieces I have written for voice, piano, percussion, and electronics, featuring Julie Fowlis as co-writer and performer. Celebrating a deep and intimate connection to nature, the film and its score is a response to an array of rich experiences I had, and continue to have, of place, land and sea. 

The project was created out of an extended road trip around Scotland I took in Autumn 2019. Searching for a new artistic outlet and a way to connect with Scotland’s wild places, I created a mobile studio in the back of a campervan and set off around the Highlands and Islands. Embarking from North Berwick on the SE coast of Scotland, I spent five weeks on the road, walking, writing music, immersed in changing locations across Scotland, visiting the Cairngorms, Assynt, the Isles of Harris and Skye, the Ardnamurchan peninsula, Glencoe and Glen Etive, and the Perthshire valleys around Loch Tummel, Loch Rannoch and Schiehallion. (For those who are interested in a bit more detail from my trip, click here to read my Patreon postings I made, as well as some photos I took whilst on the road)

This first part of the project was made possible through the generous donations of many of my friends, through a small online crowdfunding campaign. This project would simply not have got off the ground without you, and I am incredibly grateful for all of your support!

Composing and recording on the road, I returned home with fragments of music and plans to develop a full work for concert performance with projected images. However, the advent of the coronavirus pandemic necessitated a change in direction, and in collaboration with Webb Street Studios, I re-conceived the work as an immersive film featuring performances, music and stunning landscape footage, funded this time by Creative Scotland, and written and filmed over the course of 2020/21.

Inspired by the poetry of Gaelic song and its connection to many of the places I visited, I then invited Julie Fowlis to become part of the project, collaborating remotely with her to create the final score. The resulting work features nine movements in total, each inspired by the places, landscapes, and elements of nature experienced on my journey, and at home during lockdown, infused with the words and rhythms of Gaelic song. 

The Movements

1. Opening

2. Invocation

3. Flying

4. Waves

5. Ceithir Gaothan na h-Alba / The Four Winds of Scotland

6. Green Man

7. Stars

8. Volcano

9. Ripples

notes on the movements

(Oliver Cox, composer; Kare Khoo, director; Ali Webb, director of photography)

1. Opening

OC: An introduction to the music, themes and imagery of the project. This begins softly and intimately, before opening out into something broader and more expansive for piano, keyboards, percussion and electronics. It features performance in the Mart as well as spectacular footage of Scotland from above.

2. Invocation

OC: The initial musical ideas for this emerged during my time in the Cairngorms - a wild and unspoilt part of Scotland. This is the first of two collaborations with Julie Fowlis, and uses a stanza of an ancient Celtic poem ‘The Deer Cry’ set to original music. I hear it like an invocation to the Spirits of the Land.

3. Flying

OC: A more abstract number, inspired by both the feeling of being on mountain peaks, high above the land, and also watching birds soar over the land and sea. Flying. The air element…

4. Waves

OC: This number is mainly inspired by my relationship to our coast and the sea. And in particular a misty morning when a swim became something deeper, more spiritual.

KK: When we were up in Scotland filming outdoors, we actually stopped and filmed with Oliver on Achmelvich Beach and its surrounding. It wasn’t until in post-production that we felt like it wasn’t quite working visually and that we wanted to get closer to the action, to see Oliver being at one with the water. That’s when we asked Mike Guest to come onboard as our underwater cinematographer, and moved back to North Berwick West Bay as our location. In the edit, we wanted to embrace the flow and let the footage run undisturbed.

5. Ceithir Gaothan na h-Alba / The Four Winds of Scotland

OC: This is the second number co-written with Julie. This one is a setting of a Gaelic poem by George Campbell Hay. Read more about the poet and his work here.

6. Green Man

OC: This is music inspired by the magnificent and mysterious fairy woodlands of Sunart, in particular Ariundle oakwoods in Strontian. This place speaks incredibly deeply to me - it is beautiful, magical, but also bursting with life. The music features a live percussion setup and electronic sounds. The Green Man is a relatively modern term (coined in 1939 by Lady Raglan) to describe ‘foliate heads’, carvings of which which can be found throughout medieval churches and cathedrals across the UK. These are one of the most striking examples of Pagan iconography making its way into the modern Christian religion. Almost all feature a man’s head covered in foliage, often with roots and branches growing out of the mouth. These represent life, rebirth, nature running wild.

AW: Many adjectives were bounced around during pre-production brainstorming, but “wild” and “uninhibited” were the ones that stuck. We wanted to create visuals that would spark this sense of deep immersion and rawness. A connection to nature’s richness, timelessness, its ability to stir and expand one’s consciousness…

7. Stars

OC: Many a night on my camper van trip I would stand or sit outside and gaze up to the night sky in its cosmic glory. Again, something which is harder to do when living in towns and cities. If the wide open spaces of Scotland’s land make me feel big and expansive, then the contemplation of the night sky is on a different level again. This is an electronic / synth number which feels like a journey to the stars.

8. Volcano

OC: You can’t spend time in the mountainous parts of Scotland without getting a sense of its violent volcanic past. Wow! The forces which created these geological works of art over millennia were massive. A wild trio for three bass drums, percussion and synths to bring the work to a climax. This one also features Julie Fowlis again, in a reprise / remix of the Invocation.

9. Ripples

OC: And finally, a moment of stillness to bring things back around. This is a simple piano piece. Music written during the Spring lockdown, where, amongst the chaos, confusion and worry of that time, I connected deeply with the coast and beaches of North Berwick through daily walks, aided by glorious weather and spectacular sunsets…

The Artists

Additional collaborators

Lighting Design: George Cort

Audio Mix: John Prestage

Production Assistant: Evie Turner

Venue: The Mart, East Linton

Aerial footage: Alex Nail; Andrew Macdonald; Kirk Watson

Underwater Cinematography: Mike Guest

Still images: Oliver Cox; Alex Nail; Steven Marshall

PR Consultant: Liz Wallace

Graphic Design: Alex Cox

Film funded by: Creative Scotland