Sound Of Jura

12/09/2025

This informative one-hour webinar will explain how to correctly register your music with PPL to ensure you receive the royalties you're entitled to. Open to members in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

07/07/2025

22/03/2025

A photo I got of Echo City’s Paul Shearsmith and Rob Mills in 1985. The horn section, if you like.

I always had a camera with me on the road, sometimes grabbing pictures of the group. My memoir is that these two players, who were both members of the London Musicians Collective, joined the then Echo City trio of Guy Evans, Giles Leaman and me – who had built two ‘sonic playgrounds’with our Devonian instrument-building mentor David Sawyer at Weavers Fields in Bethnal Green and Hayward Playground in Market Rd, Islington. Paul came to meet us during our time at Hayward, having introduced himself and his Baliphone discovery to David at a party one night. I think I first met Rob when he turned up with a sax and jammed on our float in the inaugural East End Festival, as we played bits borrowed from Weavers.

In 1985, with violinist Susie Honeyman – who'd been a project administrator for the playground builds – Paul and Rob cemented a group that contributed a wealth of music and sound sculptures for the next three decades and more.

In 1990, we welcomed Julia Farrington as we worked across the UK, Europe and North America. From city festivals to small clubs, the now-experienced band developed a sound that could deliver tunes or free improvise from the get-go. There are recordings – some released, many not – but much of the music flew free, heard only in the moment. Music we’ll never make quite like that again, with the loss of Paul, whose immediately identifiable approach – on trumpet, trombone, or more uniquely, blue drums – has now passed with him.

In 1986, some ‘Batphone’ ideas Guy and I had put together for Andy Metcalf's film 'Welcome To The Spiv Economy' expanded into our first album, Gramophone – so named because everything we made to be played by others became a ‘something-phone’. So, the album, released on white vinyl, was a ‘Gramophone’ in fact.

Rob’s filmmaker pal Dave Wilson helped us in 1987 by making a promo vid based on album tracks. Here's ‘A Shirtful of Ice’ – Paul’s trumpet solo still creases me up. Epic, brilliant, funny, and totally what we loved about him. 👉 https://tinyurl.com/2azyuj7r

20/03/2025

The maverick and mercurial Paul Shearsmith, who was a colleague, collaborator and friend in our music and sound collective Echo City left us last week after spending his last 5 years in Germany with the saxophonist Bettina Schmid, his partner of over 30 years.

A trumpeter who expanded his repertoire into trombone, a range of plastic didgeridoos that he fashioned, and especially in Echo City, the Baliphone, his adaptation of a sound making thing that comprised a 35mm film cannister, a balloon and a piece of tubing. He readily attributed it to the chidlren he met in Bali in the early 80s, who were making their version from such tourist cast offs. He notably developed a set of instruments called Water Flutes that drew on the ancient Greeks and they became a set piece in the gigs Echo City did.

Paul's musicianship was at once delicate, rumbustuous, rootsy and intrepid. Richard Sanderson, in his sleeve notes to the OneKingPoets album 'Major Wood' that I played on too, coined it brilliantly as 'impudent'. I played with him in several line-ups through four decades, including Ya Basta, which performed for over 20 years.

Paul's life will be celebrated at some point by a circle of friends and comrades who knew him via his work in architecture as well as music, via his politics, his love of sport [cricket in particular] and a lifelong enthusiasm for pubs and proper beer - he saved a few from demoltion or horrific modernisation.

I've picked a photo I took of him, on tour in Germany in 1994, as Echo City travelled with German theatre and arts company Blaumeier-Atelier through the towns along the Elbe. I'm attaching a link to a video from 1997 in the comments, of Echo City playing in Berlin - with a typical 'batterie' augmented by the Baliphones and Water Flutes.

Farewell Paul. We mourn the passing of one of Echo City's peaceable 'Sonic Warriors'.

11/01/2025

Dunoon Burgh Hall has launched a crowd funder as it finds its future under threat. It is a really key community hub in Argyll and and an important performance and exhiibtion space in the west of Scotland. It needs support so please share this post and if you have a couple of quid, then pledge to the crowdfunder If you're looking for something to do this month, then get along to the current exhibition too - looks really good.

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-save-dunoon-burgh-hall.

CHArts Argyll and Isles Creative Scotland Bòrd na Gàidhlig Argyll and Bute Council Angus Robertson for Edinburgh Central

Help us raise £60,000 to save Dunoon Burgh Hall, a cornerstone of our town’s cultural and community life.

23/10/2024

is standing for the Musicians Union Scotland and Northern ireland Committee for a second term. If you're an MU member, please take part in the election, and Giles is well worth your vote if you do.

Musicians' Union members in Scotland and Northern Ireland, make sure you use your vote in the Ballot for our new Regional Committee line-up. The S&NI Committee needs your involvement in the shape of a clear mandate from musicans across our region. I'm standing again, and very uch hope you'll bote for me to carry contributing on issues in Arts Funding, music education, and our solidarity with and support for musicians affected by conflict.

07/10/2024

In this blog, musician, arts facilitator and MU member Giles Perring shares his thoughts on why Regional Committees (RC) can help shape the work of the Union, and gives us an insight into a typical Scotland and Northern Ireland meeting.

30/09/2024

APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN! Apply now! We are delighted to launch our new education programme supported by Screen Scotland, designed to work with young people from early years right through to industry. As part of this, we are excited to...

21/08/2024

Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the creative and cultural sector across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits here.

24/04/2024

The Faroes earlier this month, Koltur viewed from Streymoy. Photographed on Kentmere K400, which I've enjoyed trying out.

This all part of a bigger project to take my to several other countries. Flick back through my feed for the work from Norway and Denmark too - as well the Jura work.

Right now, I'm working on some sound and video from this micro-project that was supported by CHArts Argyll and Isles as part of the Growing Global Networks initiative, with funds from Creative Scotland, Argyll and Bute Council The Scottish Government and Bòrd na Gàidhlig. This all part of a bigger project to take my to several other countries. Flick back through my feed for the work from Norway and Denmark too - as well the Jura work.