Just a simple idea, I found eerie synergies between an English folk song about the Netherlands and an Indonesian folk song … decided to put them together, building the western part using layers of canon, and playing the eastern part backwards… Batavia is the old name for Jakarta.
3 – Olga Samaroff’s Grief, Greta Garbo as Thief
May 7, 2009
More manipulation of old 78 records, this one from 1922 is Grieg’s Nocturne played by Olga Samaroff, shortly after her husband left her for Greta Garbo… I found poignancy in the back story.
2 – Pygmy Polyphonics (Protracted)
May 7, 2009
No-one knows at what stage the various Pygmy cultures developed polyphony… I like to think that it was sometime before it developed in the West, although I have no evidence to support that! It’s incredibly complex stuff, without the rigid structures imposed upon it by Renaissance composers or the 20th century minimalists. I wanted to slow it down just so I could really appreciate what was going on, so I did.
1 – Venice and the Two-Stroke Outboard Engine
May 7, 2009
No grand explanations, just trying to create in sound what I saw when travelling fom Venice to its’ airport by boat, and the odd connection between the ubiquitous sounds of the simple (and highly polluting) outboard engines they have and the crumbling city/dark sea (which kind of combine into one thing for me).
