“Bell Lungs” is the moniker of Scottish-Turkish vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and creative facilitator Ceylan Hay. Her music takes a freewheeling, magpie attitude to ambient, noise, free improvisation, psychedelia, jazz, post-rock, minimalism and folk, creating subtly shifting sound worlds drawing on natural cycles, environmental disaster and the microcosmic aspects of relationships. Instrument collecting has been a decade-long passion, and she plays a startling number of instruments, integrating vocals, strings, keys, tuned percussion and woodwinds into lushly textured layers and loops.
She was Musician in Residence for Stranraer’s Unexpected Gardens project over summer 2022, and took part in the Creative Music Intensive residency with Australian Art Orchestra, hosted by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in June 2022. In collaboration with Aurora Engine, Ceylan was commissioned by BFI’sCurious to create a new live score for Maya Deren’s 1943 cult classic Meshes of the Afternoon in July 2022. She performed a sensory immersive improvised set with Shiori Usui at Cooper Gallery in Dundee in response to Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer’s exhibition Chimera in October 2022, and is the composer for a new IMAGINATE commission as part of Edinburgh International Children’s Festivalin May 2023.