Somewhere in Glasgow, a grassroots promoter is defying the adage that love is our universal tongue.
For the third year running, Cry Parrot will celebrate our other common lexicon, thanks to Music Language. This is a weekend of Scotland's finest underground, off-kilter and outsider voices, including eagleowl, Trembling Bells, The Yawns, Wounded Knee, Golden Teacher and Bill Wells's National Jazz Trio of Scotland.
Music Language underscores Glasgow's fertile terrain for exploratory, cross-disciplinary art, as typified by one of the most striking acts on this year's bill: a Poland-raised, Glasgow-based noir-pop voyager called Ela Orleans.
Her remarkable aesthetic fuses fine art, theatre, technology and music to create what she calls "movies for ears."
For Orleans, Music Language salutes the city's (sub)cultural ecosystem, and offers a summary of the vast range of expressions and noises on offer. "I always think of Glasgow as being the city where everybody's an artist, and everybody's a waiter, and everybody's in a band, and nobody makes fun of them," she says.
"People here are quite progressive and underground when it comes to their music taste," continues Orleans. "I think it has a lot to do with Glasgow School of Art, which kind of reflects on the shops that appear. So we have [dance/electronic emporium] Rubadub, [esoteric haven] Volcanic Tongue, and then there's Monorail, who are amazing and supportive," she says.
"And then you've got Fielding from Cry Parrot, who's been doing these great shows and has integrity and superb taste in music."
Orleans first came to the city as a drama student in the mid-nineties and has lived here on and off ever since, between moves to Warsaw and New York. She has spoken of creating landscapes in music, and Glasgow has largely provided the backdrop.
"What I see in Glasgow is very fitting," she says. "The beauty of it, and the ugliness of it. I've had so many ideas come to me in Kelvingrove Park, and Kelvin Way is very inspiring - walking and looking at the architecture - and also the people, the friendliness.
"I know Glasgow has its issues, but there is something humane about this city. That's a good ground for creating art."
Having issued records via international labels like France's La Station Radar (who have just re-pressed her mesmeric 2011 LP, Mars is Heaven, inspired by Ray Bradbury's story of the same name), Orleans now has a local label to call home, thanks to Glasgow imprint Clan Destine. It released her sold-out 2012 vinyl LP, Tumult In Clouds, and collaborations with Skitter and film-maker Marie Liden are forthcoming.
Orleans might invite comparisons to Portishead, Nico or Stereolab in her abstract, vintage compositions, but perhaps her "haunted dancehall" tag best defines her relationship with sound, transformed after a serious concussion when she was 12.
"I had to resign from music school - I couldn't attend orchestras, or choir, or anything with loud music," she recalls.
"I had this whole period when I was closing my eyes and I had this sound of halls full of people, and I only realised recently I've used lots of sounds of hospitals, or pools, or places where voices are faint, in my work.
"I love that sound, that idea so much - like a train station, where everybody is echoed and everybody goes somewhere.
"I used to have these sonar hallucinations and migraines and crazy experiences with sound," she continues, "but it made me really like things, like trains stopping, and noises where other people cover their ears. I almost benefited from that, because you develop interests that are unusual." Orleans identifies another commonality in Music Language. "It's really important for artists to do something different."
Music Language, September 6 to September 8, venues through Glasgow, see musiclanguagefestival.com; Music Language Redux, September 28, DCA, Dundee.
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