"A very personal diary of one truly honest, delicate and talented artist, man, hermit, soul,
seeing and feeling the world in a frequency visible and audible only to heart.”
Ieva Balode|Baltic Analog Lab
Based in a rural studio in the hills of Dumfries & Galloway in Scotland, sound artist Orla Wren makes electroacoustic music
that uses the emotional space between analog and modular synthesis, field recordings, organic acoustic sounds and digital processing.
Within his work he incorporates an interest in resonant geography, sound in film, itinerant sounds, abandoned spaces,
site-specific sound installations, science and sensory immersion, mutable environments, situational research, aural, acoustic perception and creative transformation.
Utilising cutting edge technology he weaves sound into melodies and textures of pinprick detail, revealing the antiquated isolation of the environments that have inspired them, rendering the minutiae of nature into sonic form.
He has presented his work live around the world.
selected performances
Herman Kolgen, Orla Wren, Olivier Girouard/Urban9 (Musique D'Impression - Montreal, Quebec)
Four consecutive performances in a book bindery 2011.
Mathias Deplanque, Orla Wren, Murcof, Bernt Friedman (ISI Festival - Musée du Vieux, Montpellier, France) 2012.
Orla Wren, Serafina Steer (The Fenaille Museum - Rodez, France) 2010.
aus, Orla Wren, Isnaj Dui, The Boats, Laptop & Cello (Off Key Sessions - Bristol, UK) 2013.
Orla Wren, offthesky, Isnaj Dui, Kinder Scout, Astrid (HomeNormalism - Cafe Oto - London UK) 2013.
Nils Frahm, Robert Henke, Orla Wren, Francisco Lopez (Jardins Efémeros - Misericordia Church, Viseu - Portugal) 2014.
Kyson, Orla Wren, Lee Chapman, Brinstaar, Sound Meccano (Space Textures VIII - The National Library of Latvia,
Riga, Latvia) 2014.
His music has been published on many labels since 2006.
Expanding Records (UK) Flau Records (Japan) Arbouse Recordings (France) Air Texture (US)
Eilean Records (France) Oak Editions (Italy) Facture (UK) Home Normal (UK/Japan) SilentSEED (UK)
Dronarivm (Russia) Time Released Sound (US)
selected press
"Orla Wren is one of my favourite shamans - one that can transform sound into ultra-conscience aesthetic information”.
Rui Matoso|Jardins Efemeros
"So wonderful ... it saved my day ... I feel part of your sound mycelium now, as moss on the rocks becoming moisture,
unifying the underground to the infinite light”.
Cécile Lacoste|Subtext
“The delicate world of Orla Wren”.
Verity Sharp|BBC Radio 3|Late Junction
“I was so enthusiastic about the richness of the sound, the playfulness of the music, which intertwine like cobwebs.
It is music to immerse yourself in another world, full of bizarre and lovely sound structures”.
Uwe Zahn|Arovane
"An electroacoustic nomad”.
Max Reinhardt|BBC Radio 3|Late Junction
”A dream I would like to return to”.
Ben Eshmade|Arctic Circle Radio
“Achingly beautiful and uncommonly refined”.
Boomkat
“The droning and wheeling of summer insect life”.
David Stubbs|The Wire
“I imagined gently rocking in an old wooden chair, in a shack in the forest,
completely impervious to the constraints of time”.
Danny Turner|Future Music
”Although superficially suggestive of calmness and a meditative nature, is in fact a music of excited anticipation, of bated breath.
Herein lays both its true difference and its little touch of genius”.
Keiron Phelan|Delusions Of Adequacy
”It distils sublime wood smoke folk atmosphere and pointallist digitalis to the subatomic level”.
Dave Sheppard|The Leaf Label
"Orla Wren was at times playing music of such graceful and restrained beauty that time seemed suspended
to allow the audience to observe the life of a microscopic ecosystem ebbing and flowing in slow motion”.
Pascal Savy|Off Key Sessions, Bristol
“The music of this artist is as endearing as himself, offering a shy and sweet sensibility.
We are invited to fly over pictures (his or ours) of the most charming moments captured at other parts of the world.
That’s the beauty of tiny things that gives a meaning to life here:
when a bee comes in your ear to awake you, the feeling of a sunny day on the skin,
fresh grass between the toes or a child’s laugh floating in the air.
The work of Orla Wren is highly comforting, with a respectful care to details from nature and childhood, or time stopping.
As sound flies by the studio, we can feel a friendly hand caressing our neck while repeating everything’s going to be okay.
Tui reveals those magic instants to others while preserving their fragility and their innocence, their intensity and plainness”.
Marion Gerbier|Voir.ca
“Beautiful and moving”.
Aurelio Cianciotta|Neural.it
“A moonlit night, a little girl, hidden in her room, decided to make music.
Something a little fabulous, with creatures that one tames, in a voice both magician and disturbing.
So that Orla Wren composes his pieces, as we invent stories to sleep”.
Delicious Scopitone
“Orla Wren, as you say, makes a beautiful sound at midnight”.
YuCa