Louise Quinn has noticed that ‘Better Now’, a track recorded for her current Gates Of Light project, is streaming well in Ukraine, making the reasonable assumption that its sentiment is resonating from Glasgow with love. ‘When you are feeling isolated, music is an amazing way of communicating and bringing people together,’ she says. ‘I feel so lucky that people are listening and connecting with it.’ 

She admits that this song is personal therapy too, its mantra refrain sung over a tune which came to her as a loop on a broken toy. Quinn is a single parent to four-year-old twins, fitting in her songwriting when they’re at nursery and winging vocal demos remotely to her Gates Of Light collaborators, Parisian producer Kid Loco, London-based DJ Scott Fraser, former Teenage Fanclub/BMX Bandits member Finlay MacDonald, and New York-based art director Tim Saccenti.

Their latest album, Gates Of Light II, is being released in three parts, reflecting its international production: the Glasgow edition is already out, with Paris on the February horizon and London to follow later. Quinn wrote the songs coming out of lockdown, while others were enjoying their first post-pandemic trips. ‘But I felt I was still in lockdown because of my circumstances,’ she says. ‘The only way I could get away anywhere was through the music.’

For 27 years, Quinn and her former husband Bal Cooke were creative partners in the groups Hardbody and A Band Called Quinn, touring, releasing albums and latterly working on gig-theatre projects. Cooke was part of the original Gates Of Light line-up, playing on their self-titled debut album before the couple split. ‘I was quite traumatised after the breakdown of my marriage,’ says Quinn. ‘It was devastating, and still is, coming to terms with the grief. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I was so reliant on Bal to record. I was very naïve as well. Every day was a school day. I don’t think I’d taken my own bins out for four years.’

Just after the couple separated, Quinn recalls an instructive discussion with Kramer, the cult New York musician, producer and label boss of Shimmy-Disc who released the Gates Of Light debut. ‘At the same time as feeling really sorry for us, he said “get everything down, don’t let anything escape”. It was pretty intense because the twins were really wee and I had such a short space to write, but in a way it was good because it made me super-focused. I think he might also have suggested that I take magic mushrooms, but I didn’t take that advice!’

Quinn credits BMX Bandits frontman Duglas T Stewart with musically matchmaking her and MacDonald. Despite living close to each other on the southside of Glasgow, the collaborators will only meet for the first time when they rehearse for their upcoming St Luke’s gig supporting Hifi Sean and David McAlmont. Quinn also feels blessed by the spirit of Andy Weatherall, the late producer who remixed Quinn and Fraser’s first collaboration, describing it as ‘sublime magik’ before his death. Quinn says she tapped into ‘his philosophy of how music could be transporting and have this magical property of overcoming barriers of time and space. We thought that’s what we want to do with Gates Of Light; we can’t physically go to Paris and London and New York, but we can do it through music. I guess I’ll always find a way.’

Gates Of Light II (Paris Edition) is released by Last Night From Glasgow, Friday 2 February; Gates Of Light support Hifi Sean & David McAlmont at St Luke’s, Glasgow, Thursday 8 February; and play at Websters Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 1 March for Last Night From Glasgow’s birthday party.