A workshop performance of my first orchestral piece, written for the London Symphony Orchestra through the LSO Discovery Panufnik Composers Scheme, supported by the Helen Hamelyn Trust.

Programme note:
From personal diaries and home videos to sculptures and symphonies, much of today's human activity seems aimed at channelling our experiences as individuals into documented forms. Even the primal instinct to procreate could be regarded as an expression of the even deeper desire to make a mark on our world, to leave behind a living legacy that will carry our DNA forward into the next generation.

The paradox here is all too clear: however hard we try to catalogue and preserve details of our lives "for posterity", we all know that our legacies (be they physical objects, ideas or whatever) will sooner or later fade into the oblivion of time. Some of these legacies might well outlive their creators (Newton, Beethoven or Buddha, for example) but none will last forever. We all know this, and yet not only do we continue to create and to document our creations, but we are forever seeking novel ways to record our experiences: cave paintings, written language, print, photography, audio recording, weblogs, online profiles etc.

Whom are these records for? Is the act of creating/documenting a gratifying experience in itself, or are we more concerned with telling others something about ourselves? And if the latter is true, then who are these "others"? Our friends? Contemporaries? Or future generations?

These are some of the questions I asked myself during the composition of Bone Palace Ballet, the title of which is borrowed from an eponymous poem by Charles Bukowski which seems to me to muse on similar issues, seeking to make sense of “this dusty dream”. In the piece I also allude to one of the earliest recordings of music known to exist, a performance of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt, featuring an orchestra of some 500 musicians and a 4,000-strong choir, captured on wax cylinder inside Crystal Palace in 1888.

Bone Palace Ballet

Track 8 of the Future Currents EP

Download at alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com

Alex Roth - guitar, effects

Produced by Alex Roth
Recorded by Roderick Buchanan-Dunlop
Mixed / Edited / Post-Production by Matt Calvert
Mastered by Peter Beckmann at TechnologyWorks
Artwork by Max Franosch

More info: www.alexrothmusic.com/arm/projects.asp#1105
Facebook: www.facebook.com/alexrothmusic
Twitter: www.twitter.com/alexrothmusic
YouTube: www.youtube.com/alexrothmusic

Ohm [from Future Currents EP]

Track 3 from the Future Currents EP

Download at https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/2c9Kp3PZWWU

<< EP LAUNCH >> 
15 NOVEMBER 2016 
Iklectik, London
www.efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk/events/info/future-currents

FUTURE CURRENTS: 
Alex Roth - guitar, effects 
Chris Montague - guitar, effects 
Chris Sharkey - guitar, effects 

Produced by Alex Roth 
Recorded by Roderick Buchanan-Dunlop 
Mixed / Edited / Post-Production by Matt Calvert 
Mastered by Peter Beckmann at TechnologyWorks 
Cover artwork by Max Franosch

More info: www.alexrothmusic.com/arm/projects.asp#1105
Facebook: www.facebook.com/alexrothmusic
Twitter: www.twitter.com/alexrothmusic
YouTube: www.youtube.com/alexrothmusic

Future Currents EP

Fourier

Download this track for free here:
https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com/track/palingenesis

Watch the video: 
youtu.be/eMmSFQCcoiQ

Composed, performed, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered by Alex Roth 

"Only birth can conquer death - the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul [...] there must be [...] a continuous 'recurrence of birth' to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death." 
- Joseph Campbell, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces"

Palingenesis

SŁUCHAM - field recordings from Poland

PREFACE:
I recently relocated from London to Kraków, and I am going to be posting short recordings that I make during my time here - partly because I find this way of documenting and sharing experiences more discreet than taking photos; but also because whenever I travel I am always fascinated by the unique soundscapes I encounter. Already I have heard sounds here that have surprised, charmed and/or intrigued me; listening back to my recordings, I find that they evoke a sense of time and place more colourfully than could an image. And so to the first of these snippets…

#1 (Plainsong, Planty)
Planty is the horse-shoe-shaped green-belt park which surrounds Stare Miasto (Kraków's "old town", famous for its medieval market square - the largest in Europe - and Wawel castle, in whose moat the park lies). Walking through this leafy idyll on my way to a concert one evening, I heard distant music and took a detour to determine its source. Thinking that perhaps there was an open-air performance under way, I was somewhat taken aback to encounter, in the grounds of the 13th century Gothic Church of St. Francis of Assisi, a thousand-strong congregation of priests and nuns in the midst of a liturgical recital. If the recording doesn’t quite give the sense of scale, imagine an entire churchyard full of robed clergy, heads bowed, chanting these ancient psalms, led from a fully-rigged stage by a few amplified voices (those most audible in the recording). One can also hear the birds (jackdaws, I think) who, at certain times of day, completely dominate Planty's soundscape; and, towards the end of the recording, a child contributing to the proceedings in his own way (and being immediately admonished for it!).

SŁUCHAM #1 (Plainsong, Planty)

SŁUCHAM - field recordings from Poland
#2 (Birds, Planty)
In SŁUCHAM #1 (Plainsong, Planty) the jackdaws that frequent the park were audible in the background of the recording. At certain times of day - especially early evening - they completely dominate Planty's soundscape, as heard on the present recording. I made this on a stroll around the old town's Piasek Południe neighbourhood immediately after viewing the flat in which I've ended up living, so these birds have become my neighbours.

SŁUCHAM #2 (Birds, Planty)

Probably Poland's most iconic sound, the hejnał mariacki (literally "Saint Mary's dawn") is a trumpet call that sounds every hour on the hour from the highest tower of St Mary's Church in Kraków's rynek glówny (main square). The bugler plays the same call four times, once in each of the cardinal directions. This tradition dates back to medieval times, when the call was used to signal the opening and closing of the city gates at dawn and dusk. It was also played to alarm citizens of fires or enemy invasion. The theme's abrupt end commemorates the Mongol-Tatar siege of 1241, when the trumpeter warning the city of the imminent threat was shot in the throat by an arrow mid-way through the call. Or so the legend goes...

SŁUCHAM #4 (Hejnał Mariacki, Rynek Glówny)

Composed, performed, recorded, produced and mixed by Alex Roth.

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio (NY).

Download: https://supersigil.bandcamp.com/track/brocken

SUPERSIGIL - Brocken

SŁUCHAM - field recordings from Poland
#7 Before Penderecki (Kościół Św. Katarzyny Aleksandryjskiej, Kraków)

The sound of an audience awaiting the start of Krzysztof Penderecki's 85th birthday concert in the gothic ambience of Kraków's Św. Katarzyny Aleksandryjskiej cathedral on 30th October 2018. The footsteps heard towards the end are the performers walking on stage, followed by the first notes of "Entrata".

SŁUCHAM #7 Before Penderecki (Kościół Św. Katarzyny Aleksandryjskiej, Kraków)

This is the "stimulus" track I created for musicians taking part in the MultiTraction Orchestra project to respond to. The final piece is available here:
https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com/track/emerge-entangled

More info about the project:
https://cutt.ly/MultiTraction

MultiTraction Orchestra Gtrs

More info / download this track:
https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com/track/emerge-entangled

Maja Miro - Hotteterre flute (Gdańsk, Poland)
Rosanna Ter-Berg - flute (Leyton, UK)
Asaph Sánchez - saxophone (Mexico City, Mexico)
Nick Roth - saxophonics (Dublin, Ireland)
Tom Ward - bass clarinet (Brockley, UK)
Raph Clarkson - trombone (Tottenham, UK)
Kieran McLeod - trombone (London, UK)
Paul Tkachenko - tuba (Moscow, Russia)
Joy Ellis - piano, voice (London, UK)
Ken Whelan - accordion (Dublin, Ireland)
Cedric Theys - glockenspiel, U8 touch guitar (Austin, US)
Mally Harpaz - harmonium, timpani, xylophone (London, UK)
Ian Summers - Coptic lute (Exeter, UK)
Alex Roth - guitars (Kraków, Poland)
Stéphanie Merchak - iPad (Batroun, Lebanon)
Andrew Woodhead - electronics (Birmingham, UK)
John Callaghan - electronics (Birmingham, UK)
Emile Bojesen - virtual synth (Winchester, UK)
Jon Opstad - Juno 6 (London, UK)
Alex Harker - violin (Huddersfield, UK)
Mary Barnecutt - cello (Dublin, Ireland)
Teemu Mastovaara - cello (Turku, Finland)
Huw V Williams - double bass (St Albans, UK)
James Banner - double bass (Leeds, UK)
Dave Manington - double bass, effects (Walthamstow, UK)
Simon Roth - percussion (London, UK)
Jon Scott - drums (Hackney, UK)

All parts improvised by musicians;
Edited, arranged, produced and mixed by Alex Roth;
Mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones at Gearbox Records.

Cover art is a detail of the first ever photograph showing quantum entanglement, ⓒ Dr Paul-Antoine Moreau (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow)

Watch the video:
https://youtu.be/qcMcMprP6tY

MultiTraction Orchestra - emerge entangled

Buy this track here:
https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com/track/between-land-and-sea-2

A collaboration with Canadian writer Soren Gauger, Between Land and Sea is an audio art project weaving together oral history, fictional prose and electroacoustic music. The piece takes as its starting point audio interviews with friends across Europe and North America about their experiences of living under COVID-19 lockdown. These feed into an original piece of prose that distils the unique strangeness of this moment in history, exploring collectively felt themes of in-between-ness, our place within the natural environment, fear and intimacy. The resulting narrative, read by my wife Kasia, is woven into an original score composed in response to the text.

Except for the narration, all the sounds in this piece are derived from clips that I excerpted from the interviews, processed beyond recognition, then turned into sample instruments that I could further process and, ultimately, improvise with. Mostly, these original clips were moments of hesitation or reflection between words, sometimes just the sound of the room the interviewee was in. I wanted to heighten the sense of "in-between-ness" that several of the participants remarked on, and also draw attention to the general feeling that lower levels of noise (from traffic, airplanes etc) seemed to be allowing some people to hear (and thus think) more clearly during this time. Amplifying these quiet moments, I discovered, established a sense of intimacy with the interviewees that I hadn't expected: I was listening to the sound of their domestic environments more closely than perhaps even they ever had. At a time when video calls and remote working have opened up many people's homes to the digital gaze of distant friends, colleagues and strangers, the unilateral nature of this intimacy initially felt somewhat awkward, even slightly voyeuristic. But this awkwardness seemed to belong in a project that, ultimately, examines experiences of isolation and existential uncertainty.

- Alex Roth, Kraków, August 2020

Words by Soren Gauger
Read by Kasia Witek
Music composed, produced, mixed and mastered by Alex Roth
Artwork by Magda Gauger

With thanks to the interviewees:
Anna Redi (Rome)
Flavio LaMorticella (Chicago)
Jacek Smolicki (Vancouver)
Marie Ronold Mathisen (Stavanger)
Mark Kang (Detroit)
Wassim Ibrahim (Kraków)

Special thanks to Kasia and Magda

Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts

Between Land And Sea

Buy this track here:
https://alexrothmusic.bandcamp.com/track/rzz1

Alex Roth - guitar
Wacław Zimpel - alto clarinet
Hubert Zemler - drums

Produced and mixed by Alex Roth
Mastered by Marcin Bociński at Legatomastering
Cover art is a sonogram of the track, edited by Alex Roth

When I first started checking out what was happening on the Polish experimental music scene a year or so before relocating from London to Kraków in 2018, two names seemed to appear on all the records that really resonated with me. Individually, and often together, Wacław Zimpel and Hubert Zemler have contributed to some of the most exciting Polish-based projects of the last decade: albums by LAM, Saagara, Zebry a Mit, To Tu Orchestra, Resina; not to mention their brilliant solo releases.

It turned out that Wacław had also played in an early incarnation of our mutual friend Olie Brice's quintet, so I asked Olie to put me in touch. I had received a grant from the British Council to undertake a residency at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków and I invited Wacław and Hubert to join me for the culminating performance.

The initial idea was to write a suite of music based on field recordings I would make at sites of significance to my Polish-Jewish family history. Having collected sounds at neglected cemeteries, forgotten monuments, former ghetto districts reclaimed by the ever-evolving cities they sit within in, I travelled up to Warsaw for a few days of rehearsals.

Within seconds of our first jam, I realised I didn't need to write any music for this concert. Without a word of discussion, the music I'd been imagining for the past year was just happening, totally organically. It felt like coming home.

Our gigs in Kraków and London – extended improvisations around my field recordings – were some of my favourite music-making ever (see YouTube for footage). The freedom I felt on stage came so naturally it was as if we'd been playing together forever. I knew we had to record as soon as possible.

In March 2020, after many many attempts at scheduling a recording session, our diaries finally aligned to allow a day in the studio together. But then COVID-19 hit Poland and, literally the night before we were due to travel to the studio in a forest near Tarnów, we went into lockdown. The only responsible thing to do was to cancel the studio session.

As we didn't know when we'd next be able to get together, we set about creating something remotely. The process of tracking parts individually, outside of real-time interaction, gives the piece a different kind of energy from our previous performances. For one thing, Hubert could only record via line-in at that time so – in a characteristically bold move – played a drum pad loaded with Roland TR-808 samples instead of acoustic kit, exemplifying how the change of approach brought not only limitations but also possibilities for expanding the group's sound. Ultimately, I think the track takes the trio into new territory while retaining the hallmarks of our live shows: mesmeric trances, ecstatic overdriven drones and incantatory melodies all woven together through improvisation.

So while we attempt to reschedule our album recording, we hope you enjoy this debut offering.

Roth/Zimpel/Zemler – RZZ1

A track from my score to the site-specific dance performance Memory Score.

Commissioned and produced by Jewish art collective FestivALT, Memory Score explores how we form and deepen physical and emotional relationships to the Kraków Ghetto. Once a place of horrifying brutality, this area of Podgórze has been reclaimed by the ever-evolving city it lies within. But what traces of these violent stories remain and how do we experience them today? During the hour-long piece, dancers lead the audience through the district's streets past sites of historic significance – some of which have been officially commemorated while others are barely visible – attempting through this communal act to reconcile the neighbourhood's present with its past. The specially composed score, heard through headphones, incorporates field recordings from the sites as well as texts by Kraków-born poet Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska and dramaturg Michael Rubenfeld.

This track accompanies a duet that takes place at the site where a Jewish orphanage used to exist. The directors of the orphanage, Anna Feurstein and David Kurzmann, took care of the children's education and upbringing despite obvious difficulties. On 28th October 1942, the Nazis liquidated the orphanage and its young inhabitants and their guardians were marched to the railway station, from where they were taken to their deaths in Belzec. Feurstein and Kurzmann refused to part with the children and were killed alongside them.

Photo by Klaudyna Schubert

Memory Score – site of former orphanage at 41 Józefińska

Composer/guitarist/producer: Cut The Sky, MultiTraction Orchestra, Supersigil, Sefiroth.

Founder/curator of multidisciplinary label Zyla.

Please see links below for more info.

Alex Roth Music

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