It is the least populated continent on Earth, but for Scottish composer Michael Begg spending several weeks in Antarctica was anything but silent. "Antarctica is often called the quietest continent but it is actually raging with sound," says the Edinburgh native, now back on home soil. "The wind never lets up and there is so much wildlife.
If you’re on the ocean then you’re never far from whales, you always hear them calling and spouting around. Then when you’re on shore you have seals and penguins screaming everywhere." Now Michael's trip - where he spent nearly three months aboard the Royal Navy's ice patrol vessel, HMS Protector - has provided material for both an album and film.
While on his trip he captured everything from glaciers crumbling to a penguin colony that resembled "a holiday camp", resulting in a continual spectacle that left the 58-year-old awestruck. Those sounds have now been blended into Michael's own musical ideas, resulting in Out of Whose Womb Comes The Ice - a collection of eerie, haunting music he will premiere at the end of September. "The sense of awe became almost tiring as it never let up," he reflects.
"There wasn’t a lot of darkness, so it was almost 24 hours straight for the most extraordinary sights and sounds and colours. Obviously, I expected the cold, I expected ice and I expected white but what I didn’t expect was the entire colour palette of the planet changes. "You have bizarre lemon sherbet yellow sunsets and curious purple c.