Drift by Dash Tall
Drift 1, 2 & 3
Three pieces, each of approximately seven minutes, made over the summer of 2017 to accompany three paintings for an exhibition in Glastonbury Galleries in september.
As is usually my way with these sound art pieces, I layered some unrelated stereo files within my new tape recorder (my Logic-equipped Mac), then with the minimum of mucking about, sent the various stereo channels off to a mixer and recorded the results. I usually expect a hideous din. I crave a racket of virtually unbearable screeching and anti-social atonality. It never works out like this. The results are always more akin to some form of music. You can shut your eyes and imagine a Scandinavian drama on BBC4 or a SF galactic road movie. Okay, it isn’t necessarily pleasant exactly, but it is always interesting, with particularly interesting details. Things one could not think to compose, as one sound slides or bounces or shudders into another. One’s brain is a marvellous help in the way it tries to make sense of it all, tries to make the juxtapositions sound all naturally occurring together in the same room. And unrelated is a relative term. You have to let the subconscious breathe a little. All the files - the stereo mixes of happenings to one performed sound - were made one after the other without catching my thoughts too much, so a synthesizer would be plugged into a chain of effects and modulators, recorded and I’d move on immediately without even playing back. This sort thing has to have an effect on the way you think, surely.
Unashamedly analogue-sounding all this might sound, but there are a few digital things within. It’s just my newer sound-making toys are resolutely dials and controlled voltage. Plus, an awful lot of the influential music and sound on my stuff at the moment is demonstrations of new bits of analogue synthesizer equipment on youtube videos. And there are so many. I have got myself somewhat addicted I suppose. Some are better than others of course, though I find my critical faculties for this type of thing aren’t up to much in this genre. Slack-jawed wonderment on the one hand, or clicking briskly on to the next film on the other.
The paintings reference some of the geological features of the region I live in - a lumpy bit, though part of the Somerset Levels - and by extension other geological phenomena. They are entirely abstract. In this regard I am attempting a specific correlation with the music. There are no tunes as such; rhythms are fleeting and occasional and more down to happenstance than some sort of percussive thinking or playing. I do use sequencing as a way of making the machinery sound sometimes, but this is more so I can have a go with two hands at dialling in weirdness, and I’m always aware of trying to move away from the rhythms that are being suggested by loops.
Tracklist
| 1. | Drift 1 - First Terrace | 7:52 |
| 2. | Drift 2 - Terrace Deposits | 7:09 |
| 3. | Drift 3 - Fault At Surface | 8:12 |
Credits
Sound and painting Dash Tall
LGY 025 DL
License
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Placement's 'Landscape Music' combines found sounds, fieldtrack and an array of instruments both electronic and otherwise, with tape effects, prepared systems and improvised playing
Our albums are often themed geographically to evoke a particular area or feature and the tracks themselves can vary from large scale impressionistic pieces to more focused and intimate studies..