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This Scotland Outdoors podcast from BBC Radio Scotland.

Hello and thank you for choosing to listen to this Scotland Outdoors podcast.

I'm Maud Start, and today I'll be bringing you a somewhat surreal interview with nature's songwriter and experimental composer Erland Cooper.

We had arranged to meet on Arthur's seat in the morning, but we became quite lost, circling the hill for a long moment before running into one another.

I love that this was just an adventure to find each other. I never liked to be late for anything. And for some reason last night we found ourselves after a wonderful

show at the assembly rooms with the Scottish ensemble room full of such a warm spirit we found ourselves

in a in a little speakeasy and then a castle not the, but a castle on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

And now here we are at the foothills of the dragon of Arthur's seat, trying to find you,

and you're trying to find us. I like this kind of cross-navigation.

The plan was to talk about Erland Cooper's latest album, Folded Landscapes, but we found our conversation

returning often to the folded landscape that we were walking through. I studied here in Edinburgh.

I'm not classically trained. I studied a very boring degree. My parents were quite academic

and encouraged us to all to do serious degrees.

So I lived here in this city and one of my favourite things would be to stroll up this hill

and let the fresh air of Hollywood Park get rid of, you know, the whiskey on your breath.

I think it's an extinct volcano and it's got so much myth linked to it.

I think I read somewhere that, I mean, of course, some folk thought it was Camelot's

dwelling, King Arthur and the Round Table, hence Arthur and others that it was a sleeping dragon that had eaten all the livestock and had its fill in its belly and just lay down to rest.

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