"In fact, what doesn't show, really, is more important than what does show" — Louise Bourgeois.

Created across a few days of simultaneous isolation, these fragments explore emptiness and the potential importance of what is not heard.

Roxanna Albayati — cello and voice
Ed Cooper — guitar and editing

Image: Untitled, no. 5 of 14, from À l'Infini by Louise Bourgeois

In fact, what doesn't show, really, is more important than what does show

lil version of a June tabour version of a folk song lmao. DRAFT tho so no negative feedback pls thanks

one night as i lay (draft)

Performed by
Mahsa Salali (piano, voice)
Roxanna Albayati (cello, voice)

Recorded at Shaken Oak Studios
Visuals by DAMA Studios 
Camera work by Boran Akin Demir
Audio mix and mastered by Ed Cooper
Video edited by Roxanna Albayati

...the bones in my hands disintegrate only to grow... by Ed Cooper

Excerpts of 'Phant Heap Render' (2022).
Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta. Premiere at Queen Elizabeth Hall, December 2022.

Phant Heap Render

in a portrait

Commissioned by Collegium Novum Zürich, for Sonic Matter Zürich
funded by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung

Dedidated in loving memory of Ryan Muncy.

«Seht meine Wunden und an meinen Beinen, die Narben meiner Wunden» (denn wir sind lange gewandert) is a composition for large ensemble that deals with music as spatial art form within the concert format. This work deliberately does not go the way of an installation with a distribution of musicians in space. Instead, it examines the potential of a traditional concert setting to allow music to be experienced as spatial art, which is articulated as such through its formal musical language. It represents a concept of spatiality that is not primarily conceived in material terms: musical space is also and in particular a metaphor for, in the broadest sense, non-linear, de-dramatized gestures of musical gesturing - for a soundscape that does not want to tell us anything. It is simply there. As spectators and listeners we can only witness it.

The formal means by which a music-as-space is created stem from a way of thinking that is influenced by the techniques of digital composition and that seeks to transpose these structures to instrumental-acoustic composition and instrumentation. Specifically, this involves the technique of sampling, which is applied to score excerpts instead of audio files. Because of its harmonic simplicity, 4 measures from Ralph Vaughan Williams' 5th Symphony (3rd movement) were chosen as the ideal source material (see right). These 4 measures form the entire material for the 60 minutes of music.

By copying small "grains" of notes out of a small score sample window and assembling a new score in a long copy & paste process, a kind of musical still frame is created. Like an animated still life, we hear a very short score excerpt from a constantly, ever so slightly shifting perspective. The result is an oscillating sound image that corresponds to a phasing sampler in an instrumental-acoustic way.

The long title «Seht meine Wunden und an meinen Beinen, die Narben meiner Wunden» (denn wir sind lange gewandert) is a quote from Édouard Glissant's "Philosophy of World Relations" (Wunderhorn, 2021). His philosophy is above all also a philosophy of landscape, which recognizes its beauty in the differences and not in the unifying. This composition wants exactly that: through the repetition and the always again newly differentiated perspective it wants to produce a musical soundscape, which we traverse in a long, almost ritualistic procession.

Premiered by Collegium Novum Zürich
Conductor: Gregory Charette

«Seht meine Wunden und an meinen Beinen, die Narben meiner Wunden» (denn wir sind lange gewandert)

Performed at the University of Leeds by the Marsyas Trio in October, 2024

Memphis Facula

An edited selection from Annea Lockwood's River Archives project. Used with the permission of Annea Lockwood, rights reserved. 

Annea Lockwood — 'River Archives'

A sonic exploration of space and language
...This thing is not one thing, but it is a whole.

Ed & I started with two recordings that we each made of languages that the other did not speak: Arabic and German. From these recordings, we each loosely transcribed phrases to try to capture the mannerisms of the respective languages. Finally, to tie the material together, we transcribed one English phrase together to be the principal idiom, recurring in unison each time, providing some lucidity to the otherwise multiplex structure.

The form is fluid, as the player may play the composed phrases in any order, varying the progression each time. With different iterations playing at once, little definite change is heard as the superstructure and the basic material remains the same. This said, we have made attempts to spatialise and pull things slightly out of sync to present multiple perspectives of our product simultaneously. 

Despite working from sources which we did not understand, a dialectic third meaning emerges. Weaving in and out of contrapuntal textures may simulate people talking over each other, as we often do. But the rare moments of quiet monophony that peek through the overarching patchwork attempt to characterise the whole through these sonic microcosms... This thing is not one thing, but it is a whole.

mais, l'aider (& Ed Cooper)

a lil cover of the instrumental for James Blake’s Lullaby For My Insomniac 🥺🌌

lullaby for my insomniac

Japanese To English (Red House Painters cover - XFM - 1st February 2008)

In fact, what doesn't show, really, is more important than what does show

Ed Cooper

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