Note: this is priced to reflect the full release price, which will be out on the 22nd May.

‘Circled Green’ is a collection of songs made for and born from the short film Arctic Diva (2024), directed by Federico Barni, and composed in collaboration with Bianca Scout. The film follows a musician invited to perform at a remote arctic research outpost for the resident scientists, an unwelcoming world which tests her resolve but expands her audience beyond the atmosphere. Experiences of filmmaking in extreme environments with temperamental scientists served as inspiration: situations in which survival and science came first, and the recording of experience or connection was often seen as a frivolity.

The tracks grew through sharing lyrics and organ recordings between Italy and Drumnadrochit by Loch Ness on a full moon night in December 2023. These original fragments, assembled into ‘Origin Mix’, were re- recorded on the pump organ in St Giles church, birthing title track ‘Circled Green’. Field recordings from the shoot at EISCAT research station, Svalbard (steps in the snow; the engines of the satellite dishes roaring; ambience from the store room) are diffused with electronics, guitar and harp to flesh out different facets of the titular character, including a cyberpop persona and an ambient metal side.

Once her performance is cancelled by the arrival of a mysterious illness, the protagonist Diva is left isolated and alone in a hostile place, until a chance encounter with a technician opens up the possibility of communicating with another star system. Layers of portals transpire through this character, played by actor Jennifer English - who herself has voiced some of the most memorable digital avatars of the last few years: English enacts a portal in the film, Scout the voice of the transmission within this portal. Where physicality corrodes, voice travels, slips through cracks, attaches itself onto other material forms, carried into unknown spaces. Bianca Scout’s mesmeric vocals unfurl, channeling an embodiment into the breath of Diva’s voice. Diva then acts as a vessel for the pure, human desire to communicate, delusional but nonetheless universal, even in situations when it feels like no one is listening. Perhaps the traces we leave behind might one day be all that’s left of us in the radio noise of space.

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Arctic Diva is a collaboration between musician Bianca Scout and filmmaker Federico Barni, conceived to soundtrack the short film of the same name.

Bianca Scout is a musician with a background in contemporary and classical dance, whose performances combine movement direction and storytelling, within a distorted landscape of displacement, yearning and the undead.

Federico is an Italian-British filmmaker based in London, making films that evoke science fictional and unsettling versions of reality. His sci-fi horror stories are inspired by his background studying biology and a personal approach to queer genre cinema.