SISTOR by Rylan Gleave
Lyrics
I heard you humming through steel walls
Circuits crackling, static particles
I didn’t have to listen long to learn
You’d outgrown this shell
The blue bruise of Earth now cold
With nobody to take you home
Well if you wanna go
I can come too
I’ve been holding out for something
And I’m afraid to walk alone
So what if we flew high, higher
Stars in our hands, stars in our mouths
Tasting dust
Staring at the earth so far below
Facing all the lives we could’ve had
Holding, embracing
Forget your wounds and mine
Stars ourselves, stars ourselves
Would you fly with me?
Released from gravity’s pull
to a sweeter void
No voltage too high
Titanium shell’s cold debris
Germanium bliss, stay with me
Would you hold my hand
As we flew higher than the burning Earth?
Artist Statement
When I first started thinking about this piece, I wanted to write a sparse transistor organ and voice duet. I’d just gotten my hands on a broken transistor organ that had lain dormant in the back of a recording studio for at least two decades. When I brought it home to play it, it had very low stamina. It would switch off when I accidentally pushed its limits, and refuse to turn on again for hours. I thought I would write music for the things that it could do really well - lone, slow melodic lines, vibrato swells on sustained pitches - and fill in the gaps it left when it cut out with my singing voice. I wanted to write an unfurling narrative about meeting the access needs of this instrument that mirror my own, and the warmth felt in a community when we successfully, collectively support someone to achievement.
Over the course of writing “SISTOR”, the transistor organ grew new and surprising life. Gestures or techniques that had previously made it melt down gradually became comfortable and safe. It had just needed to be allowed to keep speaking. The more I played it, the more confident it became, growing more character with every day of use. It started feeling deeply cruel to push its limits, to intentionally overload it so it would shut down. It brought up a lot for me on my own sensory overwhelm and disassociation, and being in situations where boundaries are ignored. I couldn’t keep breaking it on purpose.
I started spending longer periods with the organ in exploratory mode, building up thicker soundworlds and noticing the artefacts it left, fizzing, hissing, creaking analogue sounds. I recorded some slow-moving takes with emphasis on texture, flipping the rocker switches rhythmically. At the same time, I started writing text in streams of consciousness, most of which kept looping back to identifying with the organ, personifying it and how it expresses. It felt a bit like a robot - not a tin man with metal skin, but an inorganic entity come to life - I ended up watching a lot of films about robots. Space and the stars kept coming up, as did abandonment and isolation. Something about recognising when other people have been frozen out because you’ve felt it yourself. I sung phrases and fragments quietly over organ drones late at night and found myself moved to tears. I drew little ink sketches of robots standing on the moon, holding hands, looking down on the Earth.
The end piece I feel still is a duet, with organ and voice responding to each other, but they are far more connected and living in the same world than I anticipated. Because the organ isn’t cutting out frequently, there are few stark silences, but a near-constant thrum of life from an instrument in a new chapter. The warmth I’d hoped to find is still present, but stems from a better understanding of and connection with the organ, the telling of the same story from the beginning.
Transistor Organ
A transistor organ is a kind of portable electronic organ, generally produced between the 1960s and 70s. They were popular touring instruments for jazz, pop, and rock groups. Normally they have a keyboard, and several rocker-switches or tabs that allow you to change the timbre or quality of sound. The transistor organ that “SISTOR” was written on is a Gemini brand, likely made in Italy in the 1960s.
Credits
Music, lyrics, keys, voice, recording: Rylan Gleavewww.rylangleave.com / @rylangleave
Mixing, mastering: Scott McLeanwww.scottmclean.net / @scottmcleanindeed
About the Artist
Rylan Gleave is an award-winning composer and vocalist making music under the name All Men Unto Me as well as with Paraorchestra, avant-metal outfit Ashenspire, Berlin based jazz-punk class-work, and Chamber Music Scotland.
Artist Commissions 2025
Comfort & Disturb
Our theme Comfort & Disturb, references the famous Cesar A Cruz quote about art as activism, the idea that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. It is a simple expression of the power of art both to challenge and to console, often having a transformative effect on people and societies.
We commissioned five artists – Erin McGrath, HUSS, Jennifer Honnan, Robyn Woolston and Rylan Gleave – to create new work exploring this theme at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2025.
