Buried Stromness Album Tops Classical Charts

That the Parliament congratulates Stromness-born composer, Erland Cooper, whose album Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence has topped the Official Classical Artist Albums Chart, two years after being dug up in Orkney; understands that Cooper created a single physical copy of the record on a spool of tape, which he buried in early 2021, and deleted all digital copies of the music; further understands that clues were left on Cooper’s website as to the location of the album, prompting many fans to search across the UK for the buried tape; notes that the album title is a reference to the poem A Work for Poets by Stromness poet, George Mackay Brown, which was published in 1996 in his final collection, Following a Lark; observes that Mackay Brown’s grave, in Stromness, is inscribed with the relevant lines, in line with the poet’s contention that “the only perfect poem or piece of music is pure silence”; considers that, even with these clues and others on Cooper’s website, it was an incredible challenge to identify the location of the record; congratulates, therefore, Victoria and Dan Rhodes, of Kirkwall, who located the record in 2022 underneath the viewpoint Brinkie’s Brae in Stromness (Under Brinkie’s Brae being the name of a book collecting some of Mackay Brown’s Orcadian newspaper columns); echoes Cooper’s reported praise of “the level of determination, commitment, wit, and wisdom of Dan and Victoria” that enabled them to locate the record; understands that Cooper digitally restored the album from the tape, including distortions and erasures caused by the long burial, as “peat and rain have become collaborators in the project”; recognises that, after an initial live performance in London’s Barbican in June 2024, Carve The Runes Then Be Content With Silence has been widely released, topping classical music charts, and pays tribute to the success that Cooper has had with this project, both personally and in raising the profile of Orcadian music and poetry.