Voices, Crackles

This piece for violin, cello, piano and pre-recorded electronics has gone through various iterations to reach it’s present form. I wanted to explore ‘pastness’ in old records and wireless recordings, not only the other-ness of accents and conversations which sound almost like another world, but the way in which radio hiss and record crackle modify and mask the voices.

The electronics part is a montage of samples taken from recordings from the British Library sound archive (http://sounds.bl.uk), including language-teaching records, speeches, folksong recordings on wax cylinders, interviews and poetry readings. The instruments, meanwhile, echo sections of melodies almost like recollecting long-forgotten tunes, and at other times mimic record crackle or sounds of radios tuning, further masking and modulating the sounds of the electronics.

Thanks to Rachel Evans (violin) and Yingxin Jiang (cello) for their wonderful playing. 🙂