Coming to terms with the fact her children are now adults, my mum gets inventive with holiday destinations. One particular trip, she told us she was taking us somewhere we ‘couldn’t escape to the clubs’. This location didn’t even have main roads, let alone a nightlife: she was taking us to Greenland. 

It was June, the maximum temperature was two degrees and the sun never went down. On an evening walk, we passed thousands of sled dogs chained to the ground. This was an unsettling sight for our Scottish eyes, but these dogs were the source of income for the village and dangerous if treated as pets (a local showed us scars on both of his arms from when his dogs turned against him after he attempted to domesticate them as puppies).

Tensions were brewing among the pack. Food was scarce at this time of the year and, for the first time in weeks, the dogs were about to be fed. Slowly, then all at once, they created an otherworldly sound; a thousand screams of varying pitches and ferocities, only comparable to that of intense pain or terror. Trying to take in the moment whilst taking a piece home forever, I captured the harrowing audio surrounding me. 

Returning to Glasgow, I had one track in particular (for my solo project Sin Clair) that was missing a window into another world, and from this holiday I had returned with the exact sound I didn’t know existed. Completely unforgettable and inimitable.