Fowler, Luke, author.

Necropolis.

[Place of publication not identified] : Lateral Addition, 2022.

1 online resource.

Lateral Addition ; 73

"For four gourd instruments and EBows For over ten years I've been designing self-built devices to produce my own experimental soundworlds. These instruments often re-purposed found materials and used contact microphones or magnetic pick-ups as their primary form of amplification. The focus of these instruments was often on producing micro-sounds and sustained tones that were an acoustic equivalence of electronic oscillators. A few years ago I was on a fellowship at Harvard University and had some limited access to a wood-shop - which happened to be run by Walter Stanul, who had a lifetime's knowledge of building and playing acoustic instruments. One of the things I was interested in developing was moving away from electronic amplification to see if I could make instruments which used the principles of analogue modular synthesis but were realised in the acoustic domain. Inspired by the work of composers Walter Smetak, Tony Conrad and Eliane Radigue - I imported a number of dried large gourds from California and experimented with different methods of converting them into sound objects by attaching different strings, membranes and cavities. What I ended up with was a family of nine instruments - some of them using traditional strings re-purposed from a cello or sitar and others using non-conventional "found" materials like tomato slicers, springs or metal tines. The instruments are then placed on custom stands and activated with ebows and "preparations". A concert for these incredibly quiet instruments involves several of them, played with ebows; building up microtonal chords and modulations affected by the resonance of the space and preparations which I place on the surface of the instrument. In "Necropolis", I invited my long-time collaborator and friend Richard Youngs to play the gourds with me outdoors, in preparation for an upcoming solo concert I had been invited to play in Rome. I wanted to test out how these instruments would sound when played and recorded outdoors but was afraid that due to their low volume their audibility would be masked by the general hum of the city. We chose carefully then, a place and time, where we hoped for not too much external interference. In this recording you hear pretty much everything that took place that day. Recorded around ten am on a Sunday morning at Glasgow's famous necropolis, sitting on top of the city, we were pleasantly surprised by the balance we managed to achieve between the voicing of the instruments and their surroundings. Richard did a very minimal "actuality" edit of the proceedings -intentionally revealing our discussion and the clunky sounds of us "searching" for chords (all by ear and experiment). Rather pleasingly the recording also features the sounds of "chance" interventions; sounds that would not ordinarily be present in a typical studio environment. One observes the jet engines of passing aircraft, the footsteps of dog walkers and the comments of passers-by; including one local who said to Richard-"not trying to listen out for the deid are you?""-- provided by distributor.

Art and music.
Field recordings.
Music.
Sound.
Art et musique.
Enregistrements de terrain (Musique)
Musique.
music (discipline)

Music.

Laska, Eric, editor.
Youngs, Richard, author.
Library Stack, distributor.
Library Stack.