Stryance by there are no birds here

The idea for Stryance came to me in February 2022 whilst reading a copy of This Luminous Coast by Jules Pretty. Pretty’s book is a visionary look at the history of the East Anglian coastline, written after he walked its 400-mile path over a decade ago. In Chapter 2, he writes about the floods of 1953 where “the sea walls were breached in over 1000 places, and 300 people died in the dark.” The flood hit during the dead of night. People woke up to find their possessions drifting and bumping about by their beds. Waves slicked silently across the land in some places; they exploded through windows in others. It would take days for newspaper reports of the disaster to reach the rest of the country. When the water finally receded, a writhing mass of eels remained.

The chapter is written with a powerful compassion for the tragic loss of life, and captures feelings of isolation, fear, strength, failure, futility and power.

To say that Stryance was inspired by this subject matter would be trite. No one is inspired by such devastating loss. Stryance is, however, informed by Pretty’s writing. About the feelings that gripped me whilst reading his words one afternoon. About pressure constricting and releasing. About lessons not learned.

I needed Stryance to crawl, groan, hiss, drip, spit and spiral. The original sound sources have been chopped, stretched, pressed, spliced, eroded and obliterated. The percussive sounds are recorded tape loops of a child’s spinning top as it repeatedly twists and falls onto contact mics. A homemade hurdy gurdy drones and squeals and clanks. Matrix mixer feedback pierces the gloom. Hiss fades. Silence. Stryance.

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