“It somehow feels like it’s made up of moss, stones, rough fabric, splintered fenceposts and the smell of rain on leaves.” Joe Muggs, Bandcamp 

Living Matter is a 40 minute spatial sound installation by multi-instrumentalist and composer Mara Simpson and sound engineer, Tobin Jones, featuring the work of poet JLM Morton and visual artist Narna Hue. Taken from the album of the same name, a 6Music favourite since its release in May, Living Matter is a series of 10 compositions, responding to poems by JLM Morton. Following a summer of live touring, Mara has now reimagined the album for this immersive installation setting, re-mixing and re-arranging the tracks whilst working alongside long-term collaborator Tobin Jones.

Predominantly instrumental, with passages of field recording, song and explorative sound design, each of the ten tracks featured responds to a different poem by JLM Morton whose hand printed words feature in the installation artwork and listening post walk. Inspired by the landscape of Gloucestershire and its ancient histories (rooted in the Iron Age Dobunni), goddesses and guardian spirits (Cuda, Sulis Minerva and the Genii Cucullati), the poems and music explore identity and artefact, memory and belonging, the permeable boundaries between human and more-than-human, fostering care between all Living Matter. 

The accompanying installation artwork, devised by Narna Hue in collaboration with Mara and JLM Morton, draws further on these themes with the use of lines, natural dyes and narrative drawings.

We’d love for you to walk to the installation site where possible so have created listening posts along the way. Follow our map which leads you to the installation site, Rattle and Brash, an arts space set within a 14 acre farm, currently being managed for nature recovery and biodiversity. There the installation will be experienced in a series of deep listening sessions on d&b audiotechnik’s groundbreaking Soundscape system accompanied by coffee, pastries for morning sessions and a bar for evening sessions. For those not walking, there is onroad parking nearby.

The 40 minute installation piece will be played 3 times over each 2 hour window leaving you enough time to enjoy the listening post walk up (bring your headphones!) and be met with coffee and croissants or an evening bar, depending on which session you come up for. Special thanks to Stroud Arts Festival for supporting this event.

Join us for a deep listening session:

OPENING TIMES:

Fri 12th 7- 9pm (opening night) / Sat 13th 11am-1pm / Fri 19th 7-9pm / Sat 20th - Sun 21st 11am - 1pm

Parking: Please park considerately and walk a bit if you can to limit impact on the venues immediate neighbours.

MAP

Click here for Google map with loose points along the way and see map below!

MARA SIMPSON
Mara Simpson is a multi-instrumentalist, performing artist songwriter, producer and composer. Her work seamlessly blends electronic, acoustic and orchestral instruments, exploring her love for tape delays, analogue synths and field recordings. As well as her solo work Mara is a keen collaborator having previously co-created and released music with the likes of Hidden Orchestra, Cerys Matthews, Poppy Ackroyd, Anna Phoebe, Her Ensemble and Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres and her genre-defying musical works include bespoke compositions for the AppleTV+ series SILO and the full score for magical-realist film Blue Hour.

TOBIN JONES
Tobin Jones is a mixing & recording engineer and producer based in Stroud, UK.  He revels in the nuance of sound and finds unique and creative ways to bring out the artist’s aesthetic; using analogue, digital and vintage equipment he adds warmth, texture and character. His focus lies in amplifying the emotional core of the music. Helping artists uncover and articulate their vision is central to his work. Regardless of style or instrumentation, he’s driven by the desire to highlight feeling over form and to create a space where creativity thrives. Together, he and the artist sculpt immersive soundscapes that reflect emotion and intention, creating a powerful, resonant experience. Tobin has collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists and labels, including XL Recordings, Sony Music, R&S, and Diagonal. Known for his work across experimental and boundary-pushing music, he has worked closely with artists such as Powell, Not Waving, London Contemporary Orchestra, Wolfgang Tillmans, Bo Ningen, PYTKO, and Swedish Death Candy. His recent projects include mixing in immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio, and for this installation D&B Soundscape.

JLM MORTON
JLM Morton is a writer, celebrant and community arts producer from Gloucestershire. Her work explores contemporary rural experience and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care, repair and solidarity across human and more-than-human worlds. Her poetry has featured on BBC6 Music and appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia, The London Magazine, Anthropocene, The Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere. Her prose writing has won the Laurie Lee Prize, been longlisted for the Nan Shepherd prize and extracts from her nonfiction, Tenderfoot, have been published in Caught by the River, Oxford Review of Books and Elsewhere: A Journal of Place.  Juliette is the winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer and Poetry Archive Worldview Prizes and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her debut poetry collection Red Handed, was highly commended by the Forward Prizes and a Poetry Society Book of the Year (Broken Sleep Books, 2024).

NARNA HUE
Narna Hue is a Stroud-based filmmaker and visual artist. Rooted in a background of theatre and dance, Narna's work explores ephemeral nostalgia, analogue film, and surreal visual storytelling. Narna creates visuals that are rich in memory, nature and dreamlike imagery. Past collaborations include projects with musicians Cosmo Sheldrake, Spindle Ensemble and Mara Simpson.