In a world saturated with streaming services, double albums and enough TikTok sound snippets to dull even the sharpest of human minds, there’s something enticing about multi-hyphenate artist Bill Drummond’s pursuit to change how we listen to music. ‘Dispense with all previous forms of music and music-making, and start again,’ he wrote in his 2008 book 17, declaring ‘year zero now’. The search for that elusive ‘year zero’ continues with Hear Hard, a performance piece from Drummond and actor Tam Dean Burn, in which five tea chests, featuring their soundtrack album Voices From The Galloverse, will be transported to venues across Glasgow and Edinburgh. What will follow is a unique 90-minute show involving an ‘interrogation’ of the small audience (only 40 people will be allowed to attend) and an ‘induction into the ways of the Galloverse’.

‘It’s a cross between a listening party and a church service,’ Burn says. ‘I don’t know what punters can expect because I’ve never heard of anything like what we’ve done. I’m curious and excited to see what people make of hearing this album in its entirety, and then where we take it from there.’ These events will be the only chance for people to purchase the album, another ploy from Drummond to subvert the consumerist bastardisation of music which recalls his utopian dream of ‘people coming together with no knowledge of what music should sound like’.
It’s a sentiment that chimes with Burn, who views recalibrating our perceptions of sound as equivalent to toppling the patriarchy. ‘For thousands of years we made music with our voices. Those are our genuine roots. Perhaps one day we can get back to the polyphonic singing that did us proud for aeons.’ Whatever the Galloverse teaches us, a step back to our communal, choral past might be its most important lesson.
Hear Hard happens at various venues, Glasgow, Friday 14–Sunday 16 June; various venues, Edinburgh, Friday 21–Sunday 23 June.