STOCKBRIDGE Parish Church, a 200-year-old Georgian building situated closer to the peace of Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens than the hubbub of Princes Street, features war memorial murals by Reinhard Behrens in its apse. Depicting the coastline of the Lothians at sundown and sunrise, they will be an appropriate backdrop to SOUNDING, a series of three concerts beginning on Sunday featuring two acts whose work is informed by landscape and a sense of place.

Part of the Made In Scotland showcase, each SOUNDING concert will feature sets by pastoral pop supergroup Modern Studies and Lomond Campbell, the name under which Ziggy Campbell of electronic eccentrics FOUND recorded the lonesome Black River Promise, a quietly handsome collection written in self-imposed exile in the west Highlands.

“We spent quite a bit of time scoping out various venues when we got the Made In Scotland funding,” says Rob St John, artist, writer and musician and one quarter of Modern Studies with singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Emily Scott, composer and King Creosote cellist Pete Harvey and drummer Joe Smillie, the owner of Glasgow’s Glad Cafe.

“When we found Stockbridge Church, it just felt right,” St John continues. “It’s a good size, it’s got great acoustics and lovely light. And it’s a bit on the edge of things. It suits the idea of the audience kind of losing themselves for a couple of hours in the midst of the festival.”

On Swell To Great, their debut album released on Song, By Toad, the Edinburgh label run by Matthew Young, Modern Studies weave elegant, experimental folk-pop on analogue synths, guitars, strings, a wine-glass orchestra and pedal harmonium. It was with a collection of songs Smith had written on the latter — a creaking, Victorian instrument she then donated to Pumpkinfield, Harvey’s Perthshire studio — that the outfit came into being in early 2015.

“We’d known each other for quite a long time and played for each other in various different projects,” St John says. “Emily had been singing and writing songs for a long time and it was a case of: ‘Let’s all do something together’. The way we approached it was almost like a recording project, there was no pressure.

“It came out in a way that we were happy with, but also in a quite unexpected way. None of us had ever worked like that before, somewhere between the accessible and the experimental, of having choruses and also strange, burbling tape loops. We were happy with it, but there were no big ambitions for it. And then ... people seemed to like it, and we began to get all these opportunities through it.”

Scott’s crystalline alto renders the album immediately appealing, and Swell To Great is rich but restrained, its depths and grace revealed with each listen. Longlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year, it attracted the attention of Fire Records, a fondly held classic indie label known for early efforts by Pulp and The Auteurs, and resurgent in recent years with the likes of Jane Weaver and Josephine Foster on their roster. It is the record they’re recording for release on Fire that Modern Studies will preview at these shows, accompanied by The Pumpkinseeds, a 10-piece string section coralled by Harvey.

The ensemble also feature on Campbell’s record, which is set for rerelease on the similarly revered Heavenly.

Once home to Saint Etienne and Doves, recent releases include output from psychedelic rockers Temples and Amber Arcades, the Dutch singer-songwriter whose Fading Lines was one of the best reviewed albums last year.

For both outfits, the SOUNDING events will mark the end of one phase and the beginning of another. As Scott says: “We feel so lucky to have been given the chance to put this event on, so we’re pulling out all the stops to give it a sense of occasion.”

Visual imagery she has edited together from old documentary and public information footage will accompany the music, and the nights will feature a bar presented by the Glad Cafe as well as the opportunity to pick up limited edition artwork by St John and a Modern Studies/Lomond Campbell split single.

“We all wear quite a lot of hats in Modern Studies,” says St John. “It’s nice to have that identity, that creative control over your band. SOUNDING is a great opportunity to carry that on. This is what we do and this is how we do it, I suppose, we have this little world of a band, which we all quite like.”

That sense of being a unit, of “being a gang in the nicest possible sense” has influenced the new record, which Scott says is “more personal, more expansive, maybe a bit more driving and upbeat”. St John’s input stretches further than his obvious contributions on Swell To Great in the form of an instrumental track and a captivating take on The Bold Fisherman, a traditional folk song known to many through Shirley Collins.

“Both Emily and I have been writing a lot around the themes of place and family and landscape,” says St John. “Not in a particularly straightforward sort of way though, and it’s certainly not a concept record. Touring and playing and spending so much time together has meant that this record has come out in a different way. The amount of downtime you have as a band is loads — hours backstage, hours in a van. So you get to know each other’s styles and playing a lot better.

“What’s happening is there’s more of a kind of pushing the boundaries of each other’s writing and playing, and it feels really positive and fruitful. We’ve all got more invested in it and that has shaped the energy of it. “ More electronic, fuller, louder and, St John says, “a bit odder”, the new material is the sound of a band enjoying themselves.

“One of the things we realised from playing a lot together live is that when the four of us get together, something good happens, and we’re pushing that more and more,” he says.

Sounds promising for their future on Fire Records, a label whose artists Modern Studies generally feel an affinity with.

“They contacted us at the start of the year and got a feeling for them as a label. Their roster is great with Bardo Pond and Jane Weaver, quite nice weirdy stuff that we all like,” St John explains.

“With someone like Jane Weaver, there’s a certain aesthetic, and she puts on amazing shows, and that sort of thing is really appealing to us.”

The band contacted Young at Song, By Toad as soon as leaving became a prospect — a mark of respect to the label boss who’d championed them.

“No-one works as hard or is as bloody-minded as Matthew,” says St John. “In a lot of ways it’s sad to not be working with him. I think he oscillates between: ‘Fantastic! You guys deserve this’ and being a bit sad about it too. We’re the first band of his that’s gone on to a big label and it’s like: ‘Oh, don’t go! I don’t want you to go.’ And we feel very similar to that.

“But you’ve got to have an adventure with these things and see where it takes us as a band. We’re kind of wide-eyed but with our feet on the ground.”

Sunday to Aug 22, Stockbridge Church, Edinburgh, (V317), 7pm, £12, £8 concs Tickets: 0131 226 0000 and from bit.ly/SoundingMS www.modernstudiestheband.com