In a way to find something positive during this unusual period Belle and Sebastian reached out to fans for a two part collaboration project entitled – ‘Protecting The Hive’. The project collates lyrics contributed by fans at the bands invitation, about their thoughts and feelings while in self isolation, and collated into a spoken-word musical piece narrated by frontman Stuart Murdoch and friend of the band Alessandra Lupo, set to a striking film of a drone’s view of a sunlit deserted Glasgow during this period.
It’s a sweet downbeat tune with strummed acoustic guitar and piano with some fantastic reverb giving a sense of the lonely isolated feel of the video and lyrics. A big empty space.
Check it out, here.
The second instalment, to follow today, April 24th, is a work-in-progress demo recording based on the same written contributions, which the band are set to share as audio files, encouraging fans to experiment with and record their own versions of the song at home.
In a message to fans, Murdoch said: “Ok, I’ve got an idea. I come up with lots of tunes but the band aren’t around just now, and I rely on them to turn them into pop. How about we make a tune together using remote technology? Send me a few sentences or a paragraph, I’ll try to funnel those words into a song, then I’ll record an acoustic version of it and bounce it back to you. Then it’s up to you to do what you want to do with it! You have GarageBand, Zoom, whatever. A collaboration. Someone might be good with tech. Someone might want to sing it. Can you put a rhythm to it? Someone add some organ, some flute! At this point it’s out of my hands.”
Check it out, here.
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