Production
Ménestrel Blues (2023)
After recording for Mr Novembre (Henry Colquhoun) on Caravan and Another Chapter, I was invited to produce this French-language spoken-word album.
Henry wrote and recorded the vocals at his home studio, along with a short piano part to set the tone for each track. I transformed this audio into a much larger soundworld using a range of processes - chaotic analogue feedback, precise digital band-splits, sidechain networks, databending. I was cautious about introducing new sources, preferring to stretch the received stems to their absolute limits.
The idea of "residue" or "traces" was central for both of us - using such a constrained set of inputs made me take advantage of every chair creak, stuttered vocal, and breath to differentiate the tracks from one another. Meanwhile Henry's writing dwelled on the remains of things gone: the rejected lover poring through Les Restes ("the Leftovers") for scraps or Le Fantôme ("the Phantom") who is restlessly engaged in "the pursuit of souvenirs".
An Apocalypse Humdrum Among Long-Dead Cetacea (2021) - excerpts
Download programme note (PDF) 7.7 MBWatch the full film ↗Interface 2.0 winners announcement ↗
A short film in collaboration with Singaporean animator Ethan Ho, winning the runners-up prize as part of Interface 2.0.
The theme was "Utopia/Dystopia": seeking a regenerative and circular approach to these doggedly linear ideas, we studied the ecology of whale corpses on the sea floor, and the repeating "micro-apocalypse" that comes when edible matter starts to run out.
I produced the music in five parts, corresponding to the five stages in the whale-fall cycle. The featureless drone of Depths represents the long years that spores and dormant creatures float for before chancing upon a carcass. The Fall dramatises the moment of arrival of a carcass with a funerary, almost choral texture. Scavengers is a short, harmonically complex transition section, representing the flurry of activity from octopi and deep sea fish in the first days of a fall. Growths uses clattering polyrhythmic sequences generated in Pure Data to evoke a profusion of worms and small organisms. Decay is the menacing final stage, in which sulphur-generating bacteria kill off the other life on the carcass. We see a spore rising from the bones, preparing us to return to Depths.
Lanlon in the Wood (2020)
A nostalgic solo EP drawing on 16-bit chiptune and a lifelong love of gaming. It's set in an imagined world floating somewhere between The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem and the Discworld, evoked through music, artworks, ultra-short stories, and a carefully curated physical release.
Musically it's focused around the game audio of the late N64/PlayStation and early GameCube/PS2 era - almost-realistic General MIDI sounds rubbing shoulders with soundfonts, FM, and crispy digital artifacts. Each of the 5 compositions loosely apes a classical form, as a nod to the endless rehashing of symphonic music through games music.
Every track is a soundtrack for a particular place in my imaginary world. A tarot-inspired, numbered deck of ten cards makes the link explicit. Listeners experience the visual and tactile cards while listening to the music, just as a player experiences games music while engrossed in something else.
