Distractfold Ensemble are proud to present London
Triptych, Sam Salem’s debut portrait album available
from 16th November 2021 via digital platforms and as a
limited edition cassette.

https://distractfoldensemble.bandcamp.com/album/london-triptych-2

“I followed the visionary artist and poet William Blake,
artist, surrealist and occultist Austin Osman Spare,
and master architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. I plotted
their lives and works on to the map of modern London,
visiting sites, collecting impressions, chasing myths,
echoes and ghosts, and ultimately gathering the raw
materials that form the basis of London Triptych.
Through these pieces I have constructed my own
idiosyncratic occult history of London.

I pushed myself into the mud of the city, and the
fragments that I collected and sifted are presented here.
In these pieces, you will hear amplified objects, voices,
electronic devices, environmental field-recordings,
synthesised tones, murmurs, chirps, shadows, and the
occasional recognisable instrument. London Triptych,
like much of my work, is ambiguous, soothing, and
prone to bursts of slow and fast violence. It is rational,
irrational, mythic, myopic, my joy of discovery woven
through its seemingly disparate threads.”

Written between 2015-2017, revised in 2018 and recorded,
edited and mixed between 2019-2021, London Tripotych
is a project that was 6 years in the making.

London Triptych (2021): Excerpt

"I like it, for it is double. It is here and elsewhere."
Camus, The Fall

Too late, too far is part of a larger work entitled The Fall, composed between 2012 and 2014. The compositional process began during a residency at STEIM in December 2011: Amsterdam was the source from which I collected the materials for this piece.

I think now of the unwitting owners of actions contained herein: the cyclists and joggers of Vondelpark, the man on a bridge who offered a bike for a cigarette, the swans calling across the Red Light District, the choir of Sint-Nicolassbasiliek, and the countless others, long since dispersed but not forgotten: shouting, singing, laughing, swearing, clapping. I think also of the creaks and rhythms of rocking boats, of passing trams, the ubiquitous bells and horns, the rain, wind and lapping water, and the 5am fireworks on New Year's Day. I consider these materials as fragments of sound, but also, now, as fragments of time. Sometimes their shimmering light is obscured, sometimes it is revealed. 

This work, "peopled by bad dreams" (and the occasional good one), balances somewhere between loss and hope: after more than two years of work, this is its final character.

Too late, too far (2014)

"It's too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!"
Albert Camus, The Fall 

The Fall was begun during a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam in December 2011 / January 2012. I made many hours of recordings in and around the city of Amsterdam, with the intention of creating this large scale work.

Elements of the work were incorporated into Residual bits of sunlight, by Andersson Dance in Stockholm. 

The first movement of this work, Too Late, Too Far, was premiered at the International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt in August 2014. 

The Fall (2014)

Himlen Var was created with the support of EMS (Elektronmusikstudion) during three residency periods from 2013-2015. 

Himlen Var is based upon field-recordings made in the city of Stockholm and the outer Stockholm archipelago (particularly Blidö and Sandhamm), and the analogue synthesizers housed at Ems.

Thanks to:

The staff of Stockholm Public Library and Storkyrkan in Gamla Stan, for out of hours recording access;
Ems, for their support and kindness;
Audiorama, for premiering the work on 28th March 2015.

This is a stereo version of the work, which was written for a 12 channel system. 

Himlen Var (2015)

For 2 object operators, tape & video

The cut worm forgives the plow.
William Blake

Performers: Linda Jankowska, Daniel Brew

Recorded Live @ Klang Festival, Copenhagen, 14th June 2016

https://vimeo.com/175137049

Not one can pass away (2015)

For 3 object operators, tape & video

However great your reach, whatever you touch, shall touch flesh.
Austin Osman Spare

Untitled Valley of Fear was premiered on the 7th August 2016 at the 48th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt.

Performed by Linda Jankowska, Rocio Bolanos, Emma Richards

https://vimeo.com/184253279

Untitled Valley Of Fear (2016)

“...the search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living.”

Lightness (2011)

Happy New Year!

This was recorded in Amsterdam on New Year's Day.

Equipment used: pair of DPA 4052s and a Sound Devices 702.

New Year in Amsterdam

This work is dedicated to Annette Vande Gorne and Musique et Recherches.

A series of memories interrupt, overlap and flow into one another on a summer's day.

This piece is made exclusively from field-recordings taken in Brussels and Ohain in July 2011 and was begun at the studios of M&R and completed in the composer's own studio.

The creation of this piece was supported by the PRS Foundation and the Bliss Trust.

The Sun Warms The Memory (2011)

This work is dedicated to Annette Vande Gorne and Musique et Recherches.

A series of memories interrupt, overlap and flow into one another on a summer's day.

This piece is made exclusively from field-recordings taken in Brussels and Ohain in July 2011 and was begun at the studios of M&R and completed in the composer's own studio.

The Sun Warms The Memory: Excerpt (2011)

Please use headphones or good speakers!

Midlands (2019), for Distractfold + Special Guests Mark Knoop & Ute Wassermann

Commissioned by Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, funded by the Ernst Von Siemens Foundation. 

A full video documentation is available: https://vimeo.com/376900084

*******
...if we strip a thing of all its disposable dimensions, we reach a state of ineffability. It is as if we could detect... at the heart of existence, something ineffable that does the job of ‘being that thing’; the receptacle of each and every name, itself standing before names. 
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic 

1. Dreamt in Fire 
2. And Despite The Support Of Your Despair 
3. There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack 
4. How To Build A Machine 

Midlands is many things to me. It is equally psychogeographic and biomythographic. The psychogeographic is concerned with the city of Derby, in the Midlands of the UK. 

Derby is the site of the first water-powered cotton mill, the engine of the Industrial Revolution and William Blake’s original “dark Satanic Mill”. And yet, Derby today is largely post-industrial. To gather this thread of the narrative of Midlands, I walked the 120km of the River Derwent, a river that bisects Derby and whose flow shaped our world. 

The biomythographic is concerned with my experience of growing up in Derby as Other in the 1980s. Now, in my own midlife, I wish to channel these experiences, with alchemical aims. 

Thus, finally, the outline of the territory of Midlands begins to reveal itself. It describes a literal and ineffable geography, an exterior and interior landscape. Or else, it is a ritual, undertaken to transform darkness into light. 

“How To Build A Machine” contains a sample from “Acid Test” by Gorilla (Whitby, Kersey, Cooper, Gatford), which is taken from the Extended Play EP and used with the permission of the authors. 

Special thanks to Clara Iannotta Iain Reekie. 

Distractfold Ensemble: 
Rocío Bolaños, clarinets, objects and electronics 
Daniel Brew, electric guitar 
Linda Jankowska, violin, objects and electronics 
Alice Purton, cello, objects and electronics 
Emma Richards, viola, objects, percussion and electronics 
Sam Salem, diffusion 

Commissioned by Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, funded by the Ernst Von Siemens Foundation. 

Guest performers: 
Mark Knoop, keyboard and accordion 
Ute Wassermann, voice 

Direction: Sam Weaver, sound engineer Emily Moore, producer

Midlands (2019), for septet+, performative electronics, tape & video

Dérive was commissioned by La Muse En Circuit as the prize in the Concours Luc Ferrari.

Thanks to everyone at La Muse En Circuit!

Dérive is a stereo acousmatic work, started at the studios of La Muse En Circuit and finished in the composer's own studio. The piece was premiered at the Archipel Festival, Geneva, March 22nd 2013. 

I crisscrossed the city of Paris in search of sounds... My itinerary was built from walks, all having as their point of departure the official centre of Paris, the point 48.8534°N 2.3488°E on the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

I don't wish to explain too much about this piece: instead, I prefer for the listener to be led through the work by their ear and imagination, much as I was led around the streets of Paris. Dérive seeks to explore the connections between environments... But Dérive is not only a documentary work: above all, it is poetic and mythological, a reading of the city at the present time, an exploration of the sounds, spaces, histories and cultures that shape Paris.

I walked over 100 kilometers in order to gather the materials for Dérive. I walked the full length of both banks of the Seine within the boundary of Boulevard Périphérique, recording the sounds of boats, gulls, the constant fluctuations of the river, it's voice rushing and changing, reverberating in tunnels and under bridges, merging with the sounds of traffic in the open air. I recorded the tombs of the Panthéon, the streets of Montmartre, the ambience and beautifully melancholic songs of Sacré-Couer, Notre Dame and its surrounding areas; the creaking floorboards of the house of Gustave Moreau, the city sounds from the top of the Eiffel Tower, the tunnels of the Metro, dozens of street performers, office workers playing ping-pong during lunch breaks, children playing in Place des Vosges and...

At the conclusion of this work, it seems to me that Paris is a city of flow and friction, of movement and interruption. But perhaps more than this, it is a place of saturation and juxtaposition. I could walk 100 kilometers more, following the flow and haltering rhythms of the city, in silent reverie.

Dérive (2013)

Public Bodies explores the theme of voyeurism, both intentional and accidental. We are private bodies caught in the public gaze, we see things that we would rather not, we are simultaneously hungry for attention and yet crave privacy: we are always seen and yet never watched. 
Public Bodies is a work in three movements. Sonically, the main musical discourse is between the following elements: a human voice (which represents the Self or Inner), the sounds of the city (which represents the Other or Outer) and harmonic and rhythmic material derived from the two. 

Public Bodies (2009)

I'm a very lazy tourist. That much is to be expected. When I go somewhere new, I tend to just toddle about, sitting on benches, drinking tea and eating local cake. This piece is based on the field recordings I made while bench surfing my way around the city of Berlin last summer. As a tourist, even a very lazy one, the mundane becomes fascinating. I spent a great deal of time listening to pedestrian crossings, distant traffic and old men ringing bells. This piece traverses my source recordings, and by proxy my memories and experiences, via real abstracted sounds and their abstract dream-like counterparts.

This piece was premiered at the MANTIS Spring Festival, March 7th 2009. 


Sam Salem

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