I wanted to create a work to convey the expanse and scope, as well as the experience and cinematic feel of being within the space. I took certain elements from the recordings and transformed and developed them. Though we were originally intending to restrain the transformations, I felt the original recordings alone did not provide an impression of the experience of the wider space, thus their combination with transformed materials enabled this expansion and a greater more affective response in the listener.
The large generator humm, whose drone permeated across the entire space was extended via a spectral drone transformation and transposed to create an enveloping and phasing bass tone which grounds the composition and provides a context against which the remaining unprocessed elements can articulate themselves. I also wanted to explore the integration of materials from the various different microphone types utilised to sample the space. The work therefore combines both focussed monophonic material captured on the Talinga, with 4th order em32 recordings layered and rotated.
Wobbly metal recordings from the talinga are panned around the hemisphere as mono elements into the ambisonic space, while recordings from the em32’s provide the main texture of the work. The montage of specific metallic gestures, helped to extend and enhance the performed interplay of noises that we captured in the space, Highlighting not only the acoustic properties of the space, but also the shared performative element of being in that space, which drew out and demanded collaboration in noise making.
The whizzing S-hook pings across the space and triggers the cascading collapse of metallic pipes and objects. The original pipe clatter was layered and extended via a simple time stretch with three or four imbricated versions, each extending the stretch to a greater portion and creating the impression of a blooming extension as the time and apparent scale of the space is extended.
These more apparent gestural moments are complimented by the layering of more ambient em32 recordings, from whispering choir chants in the rear space, to more open and distant clanging materials in the far corners of the space.