I composed this piece for Chinabot 4th anniversary and performed it at Cafe OTO in London in July 2021. 
This piece was influenced by the recent lockdowns. During the lockdown I gradually felt that the walls of my room were getting thicker and closer to me. Thus I made a wall of overtones that is gradually getting louder and more prominent than the other sounds in the piece. Of course everything was
happening in my mind so other sounds on the electronic part represented what was happening in my mind, either as a conversation or just repetitive thoughts. The live qanun represented me sitting in my room surrounded by these walls trying to fight with these feelings and thoughts in my mind.

Every single sound in this piece is taken from my instrument (qanun).

Against Walls (solo qanun and fixed media)

Promo edit from El Mahdy Jr new album, Ghost Tapes. Out on Discrepant (2015)

Release date: 14th August

More info go to www.discrepant.net 


El Mahdy Jr - Ghost Tapes LP (Promo Edit from LP)

Sam Kelder performing LOAM for viola and electronix

LOAM (2016)

Ursa Major (2017)

Bernard Parmegiani’s 'De Natura Sonorum' is a monolithic twelve-movement work of electronic music, premiered in 1975. In this arrangement for sextet of the second movement, Accidents/Harmoniques, I have set myself the impossible task of distilling the infinite world of electronic sound into something reproducible by acoustic instruments. Such a process can hold a lens to the parent work to see it in a new way, be a means to discover new techniques and sounds in instrumental composition, and opens questions of reducibility: What are the essential features of a work? To what extent can we say that such a reproduction is ‘the same’ or of the same category of its source material?

Commissioned and premiered by Standing Wave, 18 January 2018, Vancouver Symphony New Music Festival, The Orpheum.

Recording by Brian Chan

A video demonstrating the process is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztpaTl-4MOw

Accidents / Harmoniques (Bernard Parmegiani transcription) - Standing Wave

The Meaning Of A Word Is At Least Another Word

Studio recording of Sad Music for Lonely People, Oct 2023. Matthias Engler and Gunnhildur Einarsdottir.

Sad Music For Lonely People

Please, use headphones or good loudspeakers.

MOULT (2018–19), for orchestra
commissioned by Westdeutschen Rundfunk and Wien Modern

Live Recording WDR Orchestra, 12 May 2019, Witten

MOULT (2018–19), for orchestra

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

Sam Salem

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