Recorded binaurally, this piece examines the sounds witnessed at various railway platforms in Yorkshire, where steam locomotives still operate. In addition to this, material that is associated with steam power, namely coal, was recorded and developed. 

The transformed and imagined soundscapes are woven into a piece that investigates the scale and energy of the sonically powerful technology.

Steam

Link to patch/performance view:
https://vimeo.com/90528404

This work, for solo piano and computer, evokes aspects of temporal reflection I found it to be particularly resonant with the personification and imagery in Sylvia Plath's "Mirror." All audio in the composition is processed live in the Max programming environment.

Dalton Center Recital Hall
Western Michigan University
Premiere performance
January 21, 2014

Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.


each morning her face replaces the darkness...

Fracture

Crows

Binaural. Headphones recommended. cheers.

Updated May 2016

Woche (with apologies to Ruttmann and Brock)

From The Piano Makers, written by D. Wainwright:

The frame and strings
of a fully strung grand piano
must withstand the pressure
of about 20 tonnes

The Kemble piano factory in Milton Keynes was the last to exist in the UK until its recent relocation to Indonesia and Japan. Using binaural recordings made during a visit to the factory before its closure, The Piano Makers is a study of piano material and manufacture, and the idea of the tension and pressure that the instrument withstands.

With thanks to Peter Corney and all of the Kemble Pianos Ltd. employees at Milton Keynes for obliging my intrusion.

The Piano Makers

I am Saxophonist and Electronic Sound and Rhythm creator from the Detroit area.  I'm currently working in a pallet gathered from German and Japanese minimal electronic music and microsound, tonality and rhythm from American Minimalism a la Reich, and ensemble textures from progressive sixties/seventies era large ensemble jazz like Sun Ra and Charles Mingus. leith00000@hotmail.com

Crows

leith00000

Related tracks