TR156 - Samuel D. Loveless - 'Sanctus'

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

Their arrhythmia, they hear, so I listen. I hold them through me, awkwardly, more for me than them. Arms clumsy, entangled, I hear myself, through them. I share my pulse, just, knowing it will be heard but, likely, not listened to. But I still hold, they are still, I am not still. Aural spectres hold sub eclipse blood work. So I listen, hoping they hear. They can't hear my pulse, because I hold them, arms clumsy. A heard pulse, not listened to, I hold in my awkward hands. My blood work, sub itself, listening to its spectre. Work is spoken, but, not heard, and not listened to. My ears wane. I hear them and they try to hear each other as they eclipse. Blood work rushes from them, through them, between them, as an arrhythmic moonlight mobile. Spectres hold me, they hear, more for me than them, awkwardly, so I listen. I hear, their hold, a spectre, so I can't listen, but I don't mind. My pulse through their pulse, spectral, I hear and hold, I am not still. My ears wax. I hear, I do not need to be heard to listen.

———

Written for Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir and Sarah Nemtsov's harp composition class at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2023. Performed by Jenna Vergeynst.

For Kari x

SUB ECLIPSE BLOOD WORK

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

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)

Japanese To English (Red House Painters cover - XFM 01.02.08)

I am a composer and writer.

I’m interested in aural limits, those that might be found both within and between listening and hearing, language and sense, interiority and exteriority, or real and imagined sounds. As such, my music is usually disquiet and unsettled in character, often comprising heartbeats, field recordings, detuned guitars, poetry, autotune, and fragmented, plaintive melodies.

My writing generally concerns contemporary music and has been published in wide variety of journals, academic and otherwise, and appear in both English and German. My monograph, titled Aural Liminalities in New Music, is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

SUB ECLIPSE BLOOD WORK

Ed Cooper

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