Spotlight On... Quinie

After a busy few years between 2017 and 2019 where they released two records via GLARC as well as a split with Shovel Dance Collective’s Jacken Elswyth, Glasgow-based artist Quinie is back with Forefowk, Mind Me. Set for release on 23 May via leftfield London label Upset the Rhythm, her latest offering, largely sung in the Scots language, is a fascinating one.

With the album's development taking placed on Quinie's travels across Argyll with her horse Maisie, the resulting record is remarkably transportative and evocative, feeling more rooted in an early Scots crofting community than it does of Glasgow in 2025. Ahead of Forefowk, Mind Me's release this weekend, and forthcoming launch party at Mono on 29 May, we catch up with Quinie to find out more.

Firstly, I’d love to know more about you and your music practice: Where are you from? Where are you based? How long have you been making music for, how did you get started, and has there always been an element of the Scots language in your work?
So, I was born and brought up in Edinburgh, moved to Glasgow after university and have been here since. My parents were from the north of England, and my mum's parents moved there from Dundrum in Ireland. So where I am from depends on which layer im looking at! A bit of a mix. I’ve always played music, just chords on my guitar, since I was about ten. It was just something I did for myself until the project that became Quinie started in 2016. My partner at the time had started a small tape label (GLARC), and I had been starting to learn more about Scots song. Being part of the Glasgow DIY scene, and the support from GLARC, got me started in releasing music.

What is it about the Scots language that you find so fascinating?
I’ve always been drawn to the Scots language, I would belt out The Jeely Piece Song in assembly and I loved Scots poems. It was being spoken around me at home and at school, and it was only when I went to study in Newcastle for university that I realised the vocabulary that I took for granted wasn't English. As I got older I liked the evocative Scots song like some of Dick Gaughan’s songs and some Burns tunes like Green Grow the Rashes.

One day in the car I heard Sheila Stewart on the radio. I hadn’t ever heard the old ballad songs sung properly before – it stopped me in my tracks. Her voice is very direct. It’s beautiful and finished but not polished. It was like seeing a hand hewn piece of wood for the first time when you have only ever seen machine-produced timber before. That is a random analogy. I'm trying to say, it is the same object, but it is personal and imperfect in a great and timeless way.

Hearing her, and then learning more about the folk revival and Scottish traveller singers like Lizzie Higgins, helped me connect with my own voice. I can’t read music, I'm terrible at rhythm, and when I started I couldn't pitch a song and/or breathe at the same time as singing. I would set off in totally the wrong key and butcher my vocal chords in the process. But I persevered because I had let go of the idea that folk music needs to be polished or virtuosic.

I’d love to know more about your forthcoming record Forefowk, Mind Me. What was the inspiration behind its creation?
I formulated the album around this idea of taking care, and being cared for, by ancestors (thats what 'forefowk, mind me' means). That sounds quite woowoo, but I had been on residency in Western Australia just before starting it, and that really informed my thinking about how I need to work out what it meant to be a kind of hodgepodge of identities and traditions.

I knew if I was to work with other musicians I wanted to be able to pay them properly and spend decent time on it, so I applied for some funding through Creative Scotland and they supported the development and recording of it.

I love how deep you went into the process with this idea of creating a record inspired by Scottish Traveller songs – what was it like travelling across Argyll with your horse Maisie in order to develop the album? What were some of the challenges you came up against?
I have been thinking about this question as it has come up a lot. For me, travelling with the horses is not really linked to the fact that some of the songs are sung by Scottish Travellers. But I can totally see why people join that up, as there are obviously links. I travel with my horses all the time just for fun, I'm not at all related to the Scottish Traveller community and I'm always anxious to clarify that I'm not cosplaying as someone I'm not. I'm just one of those horse-mad girls who loves doing long walks and also singing these old songs. Inevitably, walking with the horses has informed some of my understanding of what it's like for people to try and access their places, and having an appreciation of horses is something I share with Traveller friends. 

Because I'm not a Traveller, I am able to do those kind of journeys – the stigma you face as a Scottish Traveller is so strong that it would be difficult to do what I'm doing, which is crap. I have learnt a lot about the challenges that Scottish Traveller communities face, and I would encourage people to learn more about Scottish Travellers and Scottish Gypsy Travellers, all their amazing languages, history and stories, and the current support they need from an advocacy perspective.

For me, walking with the horses gives me a different rhythm and way of being in the landscape. It's always an adventure – a hard, slow, and beautiful adventure! The journey across Argyll was about listening: to people, to the land, to the histories that don’t always show up on a map. There were challenges – weather, logistics, traffic, board walks, cows – but it also felt like a ritual of sorts. A way of preparing myself to carry these songs.

Image: Quinie by Anthony Rintoul

Were all the songs a byproduct of your time travelling with Maisie, or did you set off on your adventure with her with some songs already written; I’d love to know more!
This record grew out of a long-standing interest in the work of Lizzie Higgins and Scots poet Marion Angus. I'm such a nerd, I love zooming in on a really specific question. These two women are the kind of anchor I have in my work. The songs came together over six years, from smaller commissions from festivals like Counterflows, residencies, collaborations. There’s also an ongoing thread in my practice around how tradition is transmitted – not just through formal archives, but through places, bodies, animals, and memory.

In order to sing these songs properly, they need to be really in your body. Most of the songs were with me before the journey – they were part of my repertoire or had been sitting with me for a while – and others emerged during or after the trip. The journey wasn’t so much a gathering process, as much as a kind of settling process. Songs changed shape. The experience helps me approach the material on my own terms – to be in dialogue with it, rather than just reproducing it – and communicate that the songs belong in places.

I’d also love to know more about the recording of the album, which you did at The Big Shed alongside some other incredibly talented musicians. How did you decide who you wanted to work with, and what was the process of collaboration like for writing and recording with them?
My passion is unaccompanied song, but I also know that a whole unaccompanied album can be quite intense, even for me. So I did want to bring it to life with instrumentation. I needed musicians who would understand that and create space around the songs, and not be offended by how sparse the instrumentation would sometimes be.

The collaborators on this record – Harry Górski-Brown, Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh, Oliver Pitt, and Stevie Jones – are all people whose work I love, and who have their own distinct relationships to tradition, experimentation, and place. They are also conveniently my friends. Oliver, in particular, I have known since I moved to Glasgow and he has featured on all three of my albums. His playful approach to music (see: Golden Teacher, Modern Institute, Ultimate Thrush etc) combined with a reverence for ancient and early music was really informative for me. Ailbhe brings an (what seems to me) effortless ear for beautiful noises, Harry a kind of rigour (he makes me practice, which I avoid at all costs). Stevie is an amazing craftsperson when it comes to mixing and building the recordings, but also brings his free, open style of playing that is so nice to work within. I'm lucky to have had them all on board.

Recording the album at The Big Shed in Tombreck, which is a hill farm in Highland Perthshire, was great because I can’t be inside for very long without going mad. So recording is hard for me!! I'm a one-take girl... but being in such a beautiful community building, where the outside world can seep in, gave me the headspace I needed to perfect things a bit more. The process was structured by me (I knew exactly what needed to happen when; I had a spreadsheet), but the actual arrangements are more about the musician's intuition. We listened to the songs together, responding in real time with a spirit of generosity in the room. It is not a recording studio so we had some challenges like heavy rain noise seeping into the recordings, but we worked with them.

The record sounds remarkably vintage and is an incredibly transportative piece of work. How has the response been so far and what do you hope people get out of listening?
I have been so surprised by the response! I assumed I was making this record just for me to enjoy, and that maybe my small group of nerdy fans would like it too. The fact that it has been scooped up by a whole range of people – from Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 to world music megalith Songlines magazine, and you guys at The Skinny – has been testament to the support I received from Chris at Upset the Rhythm and Will McCarthy who is working with him to do press for the record. And I suppose the music too!

I dont think I'm that easy to work with in that respect because I'm very precious about how the work is presented and I get alarmed by every new opportunity that comes in. I keep stressing to Will that I'm not aiming to be famous, I just want people to hear the music if they like it. So I'm not sure how he is meant to work with that...

In terms of the album sounding vintage, I certainly didn't set out to make something that sounds old. But I am a purist and I use the same tools that people have always had at their disposal – voice and instruments. I don’t lean too much on the digital support available to polish things. And my voice is, as one of my friends affectionately described it, 'A granny voice'.

I guess what I want people to take away from the album is that tradition is not something passed down from one generation to another. Generations don’t exist as layers like a trifle. People's lives are continuously starting and ending, more like fibres of a rope twisting together. Tradition exists in the present, as an intersection across generations. It is not something fixed or pure, but messy, collective, and alive.

You’re launching the album with a show at Mono on 29 May, what can people expect on the night?
I’ll be performing with the full band – pipes, strings, duduk, percussion – which is worth seeing. Harry will also do a support set showcasing his piping songs, and we have the UZGANC choir doing a set too. It will be relaxed and fun – I take the music seriously but it is community music really, it is about being together and enjoying the company. And it will be great to be in Mono, I remember as an Edinburgh teenager coming through to Glasgow for gigs and we would always go to Mono. It was definitely deemed to be very cool. If you do come, be sure to say hello!

Finally, how does the rest of the year look for Quinie – any exciting plans in the pipeline?
After the album launch shows in Glasgow and London, I’ll be having a lie down. I'm not used to all this attention! I need to start training my four-year-old horse, and I have a lot of bracken that I need to bash. Music-wise, I have a commission coming out on 6 June on Radio 3 with Yara Asmar, an experimental accordion player from Lebanon. For that I have been working with songs about doves and recording in doocots (I keep doves so it is my current obsession). There are some short documentary pieces about the album coming out too on BBC Scotland. I have a short film about the research that went into the album that I need to release, and I also have a collaboration with The Ex as part of their residency in Cafe OTO in October which will be great. Various other collaborations and ideas are floating around! Things are emerging at a pace so I am trying not to worry too much about what is round the corner but I recon it’s going to be a busy year!!

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Forefowk, Mind Me is released on 23 May via Upset the Rhythm; Quinie plays Mono, Glasgow, 29 May

Follow Quinie on Instagram @quinie.jozimazie

quinie.co.uk