This piece was the sonic element of an installation in the former 'bridal suite' area of Austins Department store. It was premiered at 'The Big Shop Show' (5th and 6th December 2013), a series of situated art and performance pieces at Austins Department Store as part of Derry~Londonderry City of Culture, curated by my colleague Paul Devlin.

A 21st century digital 'music box' process, created by the time travelling German–British composer, G.F. Handel––who didn't quite make it to Derry during his 'original' lifetime (though he did make it to Dublin)––reflecting on the upheavals of Derry's 20th century from within the walls of a 19th century container (Austins department store).

The piece features a brief digitally processed choral sample from a 1916 recording of Handel's 'Messiah', which is transposed based on intervals from a setting of the 19th century Anglican hymn 'There is a Green Hill Far Away', whose words were composed in the city.

An 18th Century Requiem (in  a 19thC Container) for 20th Century Derry in the 21st Century-excerpt

Ramp Waves (2023) for live electronics (modular synthesis)

A ramp wave is an alternative name for a sawtooth wave, one of the archetypal harmonic-rich waveforms which form the building blocks of ‘classic’ subtractive (i.e. oscillator-filter-based), analogue-style synthesis. This piece, using, amongst other devices, a vintage EMS Synthi AKS analogue semi-modular synthesiser from c.1973 is inspired by the linear and non-linear nature of outputs from detuned and interfering analogue oscillators. 

In an age of long shadows of non-linearity and tipping points, I have found myself returning to the decomposing solids of drones, from the uneven steps of harmonic series microtonality to interfering frequency complexes conjuring phantoms and fractures.

Ramp Waves (for EMS Synthi): Belfast Festival performance

A work-in-progress modular piece based on cycles alternating between transients, textures and pitches.

Residue Fix Guildhall Sept 30th 23

'Echoes from A Near Orbit' is a reworking of a piece of mine from some years back, 'Resonances from a Near Orbit'. 

The piece is based on an exploration of the basic structure of the harmonic series...basically, the pattern of tones within a musical note. The 'near orbit' of the title refers to the use of the earlier parts of the harmonic series for the piece's structure and materials. 

Tunings conform to standard Western tunings, as opposed to the natural tunings (based on whole-number ratios) found in the harmonic series.

Echoes From A Near Orbit (2015)

Some early testing of my new piece Machine Time, influenced by the analogue cybernetic systems and music of Roland Kayn and Jaap Vink. The piece's evolution is nudged along by me at various points, but the overall system also influences itself to advance and retreat in various directions, from ambient ripples to microtonal droning saws. Premiere at Signal Flow festival (Northern Lights project), Derry, Playhouse Theatre, April 27th.

Machine Time

Machine Time 2

Making Ghosts from Empty Landscapes (TiMi Ensemble with Paul Harrigan)

Angels at the Shotgun Wedding movt 4 (Maynooth Electric Guitar Array, 2008)

My first attempts to trace Beijing came during disorientating hour-long taxi journeys past identical-looking blocks looming out of the smog. Beijing in winter is a dark pencil sketch of indistinct outlines, evocative in its impressionistic abstraction. But as spring came and my ears opened, a new kind of tracing ensued. Now it was the mystery of where meaning was centred; in the polyphonic society of narrow hutong laneways, in the constant construction remodelling the city, in the globalised American and British accents of automated subway announcements, in the park where elderly traditional musicians who lived through the Cultural Revolution play not far from former Red Guards nostalgic for the music of their youth.  Meanings found in the collision of all-night bars, white picket–fence barriers and slick, surveilled social networks with lively conversations still taking place. And all the while, the spring and the smog duel for supremacy, and the city still sprawls and shifts in and out of focus…

This version of 'Tracing Beijing' is a stereo reduction of an 8-channel fixed-media piece. This piece is based on field recordings from a 3-month stay in Beijing during spring 2015. 'Tracing Beijing' was premiered at Sounding Out the Space, Dublin, Nov 4th, 2017.

Tracing Beijing (2017) stereo reduction

Composer and electronic sound person from Dublin, Ireland, also based in Derry, NI, where I work at Ulster University.

BrianBridges

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