Spotlight On... Doughnut Music Lab, Beautiful Cosmos & Diljeet Kaur Bhachu

This week's Spotlight On... is a three-for-one (you're welcome) as we shine a light on Glasgow-based art and research collective Doughnut Music Lab, as well as the two Glasgow artists – Beautiful Cosmos and Diljeet Kaur Bhachu – releasing their debut albums via the collective this weekend. The releases will be celebrated in a one-off joint show as part of this year's Celtic Connections festival on Saturday 25 January at The Glad Cafe.

First up, we find out more about Doughnut Music Lab. Led by Dr Matt Brennan, Professor of Popular Music at the University of Glasgow, we learn more about what they hope to achieve as a more sustainable music outpost in Scotland as they adopt the concept of 'doughnut economics'.

Doughnut Music Lab

How did the idea for Doughnut Music Lab come about?
In recent years I’ve become interested in Kate Raworth’s concept of 'doughnut economics'. Raworth and others have convincingly argued that the objective of unchecked economic growth is nowhere near being sufficiently decoupled from the industrial burning of fossil fuels, and as a result the current global economic model we use is propelling us all into an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.

The model of doughnut economics is based on a sustainable window for economic activity, with a social foundation of well-being that no one should fall below (the inner ring of the doughnut), and an ecological ceiling of planetary pressure that we should not go beyond (the outer ring of the doughnut). As Raworth says, "between the two lies a safe and just space for all." Raworth’s model is about as high level as it’s possible to get, global in scale, but she encourages people working in different areas to adapt and apply the model to their own fields. So a group of us wanted to explore how we might apply the Doughnut to the music sector.

You’ve got two records coming out this week. Can you tell us a bit more about the physical format? And what has the general response been from artists upon hearing about what you're doing?
We’re releasing the albums on a sleeve-only and digital download format, meaning that we’ve printed beautiful 12-inch vinyl record sleeves, but the vinyl record itself is conspicuously absent. Instead the manufacturing budget goes to creating lovely paper inserts with specially-made artwork and a download code. The sleeve itself is printed on recycled card using plant-based inks, and as such there will be a minimum of new plastic generated for the album release. 

To be clear, I love vinyl records and don't want to get rid of them (although I’d welcome them being made of renewable materials), and I don't see a paper ‘sleeve-only and download code’ album release as a one-size-fits-all solution. I see it as an artistic intervention, with any impact coming from its symbolic power – the power of directing attention and holding space for imagining alternative ways of being in the world. In other words, it’s a prompt to spark conversation around how truly high-emitting areas of human activity (e.g. energy, transport, food, manufacturing) all need to change dramatically. Hopefully it will be received as it’s intended, as a playful experiment.

The artists that we’ve talked to about this idea are mostly quite excited and curious to see the results! We’d be interested to see what Taylor Swift makes of it. 

Maybe it’s too early to know, but a lot of music fans love buying records and growing their record collections – how does the price point differ for this record sleeve and download format? And what has the response been like so far from consumers? 
It’s worth saying that I’m also a vinyl fan with a record collection. The idea is that the sleeve-only releases can physically sit comfortably in a normal record collection, and they might also appeal to music fans who don’t collect vinyl but might want to support an artist by buying their art in the same way you would buy a nice poster or print.

Figuring out a suitable price point is actually part of the experiment. We’re doing a survey of vinyl record buyers at the moment to gather data on that... We’ll be selling the sleeves to ticket-holders at the launch concert at a special price of £10 each, and it will be the first time they’re available, so we’ll learn the first consumer response this Saturday night!

What do you hope for the future of Doughnut Music Lab?
Although our launch experiment is releasing two albums, we’re not aiming to be a label. We want to be a lab: an art and research collective inspired by doughnut economics to imagine what shape musical life might take in a post-fossil fuel future. Hopefully a variety of experiments will follow!

Image: Beautiful Cosmos by Marisa Privitera

Beautiful Cosmos

As well as leading on Doughnut Music Lab, Brennan is also one half of Beautiful Cosmos alongside his wife Anna Miles. The two have a deep-rooted history in the Glasgow music scene with Miles formerly fronting Maple Leaves and featuring on Belle and Sebastian songs, while Brennan was a member of Zoey Van Goey. We catch up with Miles to find out more about the new project.

You both have quite a lot of history in the Scottish music scene, and I know you're married, but how did this new project come about? And what inspired the name?
In the early years of our relationship – despite each of us posessing a healthy appreciation for the other's musical sensibilities from the off – writing songs together felt like far too big a risk. Would I unceremoniously bin Matt over a throwaway lyric, or might he break it off with me after a needless fight over time signatures? We were unsure. So we shelved the idea until eventually so much time had passed we knew fun would be the priority. And also, the curiosity got too much!

Our band name is taken from an Ivor Cutler song called Beautiful Cosmos that Matt and I sang together for a Cutler tribute album (Return To Y’Hup) he put out with other artists back in January 2020. We both loved the sentiment, simplicity and imagery of the song, and it also acted as a reminder of that last, blissful bit of fun we had at the Return To Y’Hup album launch; right before the world stopped.

Your debut record, Dance of the Atoms, is out this weekend, produced by Field Music and Andy Monaghan – how did you end up working with two such prolific artists on this record?
Back in 2023 I was really fortunate to get a small grant from UNESCO Glasgow City of Music which paid for a couple of days' recording time with Andy in his studio in the east end of Glasgow. Although Matt had previously worked with Andy, I didn't know him, but was obviously a big Frightened Rabbit fan! The addition of Bart Owl (eagleowl) on bass and Les Back on guitar meant that we got down Gabrielle and Fans In the Shadows in those sessions, and it was a joy to watch Andy record and conduct his musical wizardry over that time.

Working with Field Music came about after I saw a tweet they'd posted – back in the older, kinder Twitter days, might I add – in which they'd asked for recommendations for good drum books to read. I replied, linking Matt's book (Kick It: The Social History of the Drum Kit) then promptly forgot about it. In the meantime, however, both Peter and David Brewis read Matt's book, loved it and got in touch to say so, which we were both very excited about as huge Field Music fans.

A few months later when we were watching Sarah Hayes at a gig at Òran Mór, we bumped into Peter in person and quickly hit it off. Somehow or other, the topic of recording came up and what followed was a dream situation that both Matt and I are still pinching ourselves over months later. North East lore traditionally pits Geordies and Mackems against each other, but let me tell you that *this* Geordie had an absolute *ball* recording in Sunderland with the Brewis men.

Working with them as producers was both fascinating to watch and to experience. Matt and I would bring them finished demos and closely discuss our references and ideas, then we'd essentially all form a band together, adding to sections here and there and building parts. Their production style is very collaborative, open and inventive, and playing with musicians of that calibre really does make you raise your game to the highest point you can get it!

And can you tell us a little bit about the record and the central theme of approaching middle age? 
Personally, I didn't make a conscious decision to have middle age as a theme, but as both of us are now in our forties I realise that perhaps there's a degree of inevitability about it! The album covers a range of themes and emotions really; there are the more storytelling songs of Gustav and Gabrielle that were influenced by local figures and experiences that I've had working with teens in the past few years, for example. Then there are a couple of songs that deal with the initial flush of being besotted in love, but those songs are perhaps balanced out by others touching on burnout and grappling with the realisation that life is still a mystery in myriad ways.

You’re celebrating the album’s release with a show at The Glad Cafe this weekend as part of Celtic Connections; what can people expect from the show?
Well, we were totally delighted when Peter Brewis said he was up for playing guitar in our live band, so you can expect a member of Field Music on stage, for one! Our band is incredible, actually; if you'll permit me a small boast on her behalf (although she'll be absolutely mortified at this – sorry in advance, Krina) our pianist Krina won three Awit Awards (the Filipino equivalent to the Grammies) over Christmas with the a capella group she is in back in the Philippines. Our bassist is eagleowl's Bart Owl, and Les Back – a member of the Glasgow-based funk collective Scottish Parliament amongst a million other accolades – will be providing some seriously beautiful jangle to boot. I'm on vocals and flute whilst Matt is drumming his heart out; we cannot wait.

There's also the incredible Diljeet Kaur Bhachu who were all really looking forward to seeing perform. Her album is stunning, so it's going to be a great night.

Image: Diljeet Kaur Bhachu by Grainmaister

Diljeet Kaur Bhachu

While Beautiful Cosmos and Diljeet Kaur Bhachu couldn't be further apart musically, they're connected by their lives in Glasgow, by Doughnut Music Lab, and by the flute which both Miles and Kaur Bhachu play. Part of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and a regular collaborator and performer alongside Kapil Seshasayee, Kaur Bhachu's autobiographical debut album Double Lives is a work of real depth, beauty and true vulnerability. We catch up with Kaur Bhachu to find out more.

Double Lives is the first time you’ve recorded your own material in a studio setting. Can you tell us about the idea(s) behind the record?
Double Lives is a concept album about experiences of living a fragmented, messy life as a child of diaspora. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past decade reckoning with the very compartmentalised parts of my life, having kept my musical, cultural/home and social worlds very separate from each other growing up.

I started writing poetry while I was studying for my doctorate, and at that time was also beginning to learn about my family history, our relationships with colonialism, displacement and migration, and those two pursuits merged at some point along the way. I spent a lot of time delving through family photographs, papers, asking various relatives to tell me stories, deeply wanting to know more. I became really interested in the idea of selves – the versions of my ancestors that evolved as they navigated migration, the ways in which historic events impacted individual trajectories, and the sort of chance-based nature of that.

Alongside all of that, I was growing my relationship with improvisation, as well as writing bits of music here and there, so I’ve also tried to explore both spheres through those themes, in terms of improvising and composing in response to the themes and materials I was drawing inspiration from.

A lot of the poetry for the record you wrote while taking part in the BBC's Words First talent scheme. What was it like being part of that development scheme?
Words First was in hindsight such a huge part of developing my work with words – I feel really lucky to have been able to do that while we were in the first lockdown in 2020, while I was working in the museums and heritage sector and immersing myself in family history. I learned so much from the poets who were running the workshops as well as the other participants who are all just incredible wordsmiths, it was so inspiring and reaffirming that everyone has their own style and approach. I think what I took most from it was the confidence boost to keep writing, in my own way, as working with words hadn’t been my primary focus, and it really helped me develop some of the poetry that has made its way onto the album. It’s been really nice to go back through my notebooks while looking for material for the album.

I’d also love to know more about your time spent studying with Ranjana Ghatak to bring Hindustani classical music into your practice?
Ranjana has changed my life – I said this to her recently! I connected with Ranjana by chance in late 2022, around the same time that she was advertising her next block of online teaching, and before I knew it I was signed up. I have sung on and off my whole life, starting with Sikh devotional music at a young age, and then through school and university, but in my late teens and twenties I really struggled with my confidence and then stopped singing in public for many, many years. In the Hindustani tradition, the voice is used differently to Western singing – I found this helpful as a way in to building a better relationship with mine. I feel like I’m in a completely different space with my voice now – Ranjana is the perfect example of how the right guide, mentor, [or] teacher can open up a world for you, and I feel so blessed to have my singing family in my life now.

Working with the voice is so deeply personal, and so intrinsic to my sense of self, so it quickly became an important part of the album process, and I knew when I first started studying that I wanted to find ways to incorporate it into my practice but I wasn’t quite sure how. Ranjana has worked on lots of cross-genre and cross-cultural projects so I had the best source of guidance and advice as I navigated how to incorporate my singing practice into my work. It’s a tradition of life-long learning so I’ve also had to navigate and reconcile how I can begin to bring it in at this point in my studies, whilst having a very long road ahead.

Double Lives is such a beautiful put-together collection of sounds and influences so deeply personal to you, I’d love to know what it was like working on such a personal record? What have you learnt?
Gosh, where do I start… There were lots of different ways in which it’s been a personal journey, so I feel like a very different version of myself on this side of it. I have realised along the way that by making this record and now putting it out into the world, I have marked a milestone in my journey to put back together my fragmented life. 

Even though I had most of my inspiration material and poetry already, I found myself connecting with it in new ways through the process – little realisations about how I might have perceived a story that I was all of a sudden now thinking differently about; seeing old photos in a new light. I have thought a lot about intention – my ancestors’ intentions and my own intentions – in terms of what story I am telling and how I am telling it. Having written all of the poetry between 2018 and 2020, it was also quite enlightening to revisit, rethink and revise some of it, having grown a lot since then on both personal and creative levels.

I was really nervous about it being such a personal piece of work, but I’ve learned that the right collaborators can make it feel so safe. Both John Cavanagh (producing) and Malini Chakrabarty (artwork) have been incredible sounding boards, and really worked with me to make sure I was happy with both outputs.

I really tried throughout to push myself musically, as part of reclaiming my sense of self, to embrace the mistakes, not over-edit, find comfort in my voice again, surrender to the improvisation, and let go. My relationship with improvisation hasn’t always been positive, so I wanted to take myself into a new place with that too, to sort of embody some of the unknowns that come up in the thematic material of the album in a musical sense.

How will the album translate into a live setting for the show this weekend?
I thought about this quite a lot in the studio, as I’m not used to having to work that part out! There’s a lot of magic in John’s production on the record and a good amount of improvisation that I won’t try to recreate exactly. So there’s a framework of phrases, the poetry, the sung lyrics, choices of raag and instrumentation, but I am an improviser at the end of the day so the live version still tells all of the stories, but it will be a bit different and I love that every time I perform material from the album there will be a uniqueness to it for each audience.

Since recording in the autumn, I’ve already had ideas of how I can grow some of the pieces so I’m looking forward to building on it in the live shows (I’ll also be performing the album as part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Fest’s Novus programme, at the Jazz Bar on Friday 21 March).

Finally, you're releasing the album via Doughnut Music Lab – what's your reason for releasing with this new sustainability-focused label?
I was really interested in the visual aspect of Doughnut Music Lab when Matt described the model to me, as I could already imagine what I might do with it, but also to understand the appetite for making work in this way. It’s always great to be able to work in new ways, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to release with DML and see how this works as a format.

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Beautiful Cosmos release Dance of the Atoms and Diljeet Kaur Bhachu releases Double Lives via Doughnut Music Lab on 25 Jan; both will perform as part of Celtic Connections at The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 25 Jan

Follow Doughnut Music Lab @doughnutmusiclab

Follow Beautiful Cosmos @beautifulcosmosband

Follow Diljeet Kaur Bhachu @diljeetb_flute