*Supported by Arts Council England*
'Edgeland' is taken from the environmentalist Marion Shoard who coined the term, which she defined as "the interfacial interzone between urban and rural". The piece focuses on a particular place that I've long admired - the place where the Sea meets the industrial estates of Stamco, West St Leonards.
I’ve long been interested, with our growing awareness of the climate catastrophe, how these ‘confused’ spaces are perceived. Where nature and human industrialisation sit next to each other. 
For Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, their book ‘Edgelands’ these are the great "unnamed" and "ignored" landscapes of modern England: places where "our slipstream has created a zone of inattention" in which all manner of interest and beauty thrive.

Edgeland 2 - Live

Taken from recordings in my garden at dawn in the first lockdown of March 2020. Hope and distortion.

Springs Eternal

“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 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 (two tracks are dedicated to her daughters), 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 lead our attempts to confront the climate catastrophe, but one that bares witness to what is. 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)

7 - The Sea Wrote It

6 - Steady Heart

5 - Bell Of The Waves

4 - Edgeland II

3 - Sacred Ground

2 - Here Comes The Rayne

1 - Springs Eternal

Butterfly Dance

Tides

01 Seed Rain.mp3

05 Orca.mp3

Ruby Colley is a violinist and composer. 
She creates instrumental soundscapes that are far beyond the realm of traditional playing, with the complex web of sound more akin to an electric orchestra. She draws upon many different styles such as Folk, Jazz and Classical. Her debut album Murmurations presents a strong selection of all of these. Ruby’s music is eclectic but strangely unique and her performances charged with emotional power and nuance. She has written for Film, and collaborated with Theatre and Dance, and played with acts such as Owen Pallette, Sinead O’Connor, The Unthanks, Hawk and a Hacksaw, Zoe Keating and the late John Martyn. Her most recent film collaboration with Dance United has been accepted into the Fastnet Film Festival and Encounters Film Festival.

"Ruby Colley creates songs of compelling beauty. This is instrumental music that speaks fluently to our hearts."
Francis Jones, 'DiS'.

Ruby Colley

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