In the southeast corner of London, amidst the clatter of trains, the hum of high-rises, and the quiet nostalgia of childhood streets, producer Vellum Hill has spent years sculpting sound. His music lives somewhere between the synthetic and the organic — a convergence of ambient textures, live instrumentation, field recordings, and fractured memories. A lifelong student of sonic architecture, his roots trace back to the hypnotic abstractions of Warp Records and the leftfield energy of ‘90s rock and metal. But no chapter in his artistic journey has been quite as unexpected — or as transformative — as what happened this past January.
That’s when Vellum Hill signed up for a songwriting course.
Led by none other than Brian Eno.
Eno — the undisputed architect of ambient music, the creative force behind landmark records from Bowie to U2 — took a thousand artists under his wing for a four-week masterclass hosted by School of Song. It wasn’t just a course; it was an event. A portal. A space of unraveling, rebuilding, and redefining the very act of making music.
“It felt unreal,” Vellum Hill shares. “Brian isn’t just an icon. He’s the icon. A person who’s redefined what music can be. Learning from him — seeing how he thinks, how he listens, how he dares — it shifted something in me.”
What followed was a month of exploration, challenge, and revelation. Eno’s lessons wandered between the grand and the granular — from musings on what art is to precise recommendations like “try more handclaps.” But more than anything, what Eno offered was a mindset: permission to try, to fail, to follow instinct, and to trust that sometimes, the art comes after the process begins.
For Vellum Hill, who usually labored over songs for years, this was a radical invitation.
“He gave us deadlines. Assignments. And I realized I could create in ways I never imagined — quickly, emotionally, intuitively. It was a breakthrough.”
From that experience was born Songs for a Scattered Classroom — a body of work composed entirely during that month, shaped by the prompts Eno delivered week after week. The EP is at once raw and considered, spontaneous yet strangely cohesive. It doesn’t just showcase sonic craftsmanship; it captures the spirit of discovery itself.
The standout piece, “Fewer, Smaller,” emerged from what Vellum Hill calls “the hardest assignment.” The brief? Write something about something. Not just a vibe. Not just sound. But substance. Significance.
“I sat in silence for hours. No gear. No notes. Just asking: what’s worth writing about right now?”
The answer took the form of a hopeful fiction: a world where humanity chooses restraint over expansion, reflection over dominance. A civilization that stops chasing “more” and starts embracing “enough.” It was a meditation on stillness — on choosing fewer things, smaller things, truer things.
Musically, “Fewer, Smaller” began with a sparse, atmospheric opening. Initially intended as the whole track, it soon gave way to something deeper — an ending that slowly bloomed and dissolved into silence. Vellum Hill leaned into the imbalance, letting the track swell, then peel back its layers until all that remained was breath.
“It felt like exhaling,” he says. “Like letting go of density, of pressure. Like reaching peace — or at least the idea of it.”
There’s a tenderness in how these songs unfold. They don’t demand your attention — they invite it. They ask you to lean in, to sit with ambiguity, to hear the quiet behind the noise. It’s music that doesn’t posture. It wonders. It waits.
The title itself — Songs for a Scattered Classroom — feels almost mythic. A digital gathering of far-flung minds, brought together by one guiding voice. One thousand students in different rooms, different cities, different time zones — each one listening, learning, trying. Each one composing their own answers to questions Eno didn’t always ask directly. Scattered, yet unified. Alone, yet profoundly connected.
For Vellum Hill, this EP is more than a project. It’s a marker in time. A reminder that constraint can become a kind of liberation. That learning never stops. That even after years of creating, there are still new doors to open.
“This project taught me that urgency and depth aren’t opposites. That quick doesn’t mean shallow. That beauty can happen when you stop second-guessing and just begin.”
And in a world that often feels chaotic, fast, and fragmented, Songs for a Scattered Classroom feels like a small act of defiance — or maybe of healing. It asks us to slow down. To do less. To listen better. To believe that even in scattered classrooms, scattered lives, and scattered hearts… something whole can still emerge.
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