We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Drawn in Yards Upon the Sea Defence (a Process of Line​-​making part 4)

by Distant Animals (in a Forest of Signs)

/
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

about

Comprised of both the collaborators’ more experimental, extra-musical movements through the site (as directed by the score), and examples of more composed, rehearsed works. Some of these recordings were the result of sustained exploration of a single passage of the score over numerous weeks, whilst others document more improvised approaches, with a line or word serving as a springboard for new thematic material.

NOTE: Whoever purchases this album will be given the 'text-score' that accompanies the entire project as a .pdf file. Thank you for your support!

Description of the project as a whole:

The brief I provided to my collaborators was simple – we were to bring instruments to the church, lock ourselves in for an extended period, and explore how the instruments, and ourselves, responded to the acoustic and aesthetic properties of the building. The recording of our explorations would proceed hand in hand with the creative act – a recording studio would be set up in the church to capture everything we did, as well as pen and paper used to produce a series of instructions for future collaborators. This document, created in tangent with my own experiments outside of the church, would form a cohesive score by which to orientate our movements. The demands of making such a recording forced us to directly engage with ideas of movement, embodiment, sense, and non-linearity. Rather than relying upon the prior utility of the church, the space was repurposed with a view to capturing its strongest sonic presence – whilst the presbytery, sanctuary, and quire traditionally might be used to project sound around the space, our goal was to record not only the sound source, but also the buildings acoustic response. As such, most of our movements took place across the transept, ambulatory, and crossing, with the more traditionally performative spots of the presbytery, sanctuary, and nave instead housing the microphones used to document our performances. Although there were some fixed objects we wished to record – notably the organ and piano – much of our initial work in the church focussed on trying to develop an understanding of the acoustic, historic, and social aspects of the building. The sessions would begin with a series of exercises – the participants moving or dancing through the church, reciting passages from the texts already present at the site (bibles, fire exit signs, etc.), and discussing the objects that resided there (the stained glass, the stonework, the community notice board, etc.). This would be followed by more sound-specific work - measuring the reflections and frequency response in different areas of the building, capturing impulse responses, documenting the relationship between the external noise of the street and the internal acoustics, exploring the effect of spatiality and reflection on improvisation/collaboration, and testing the sonic potential of existing resonant objects (pews, bells, railings, etc.). My goal was that our experience of the church site would be continuous, with no distinction drawn between the musical and contextual elements with which we worked. The social history, architectural traits, and acoustic properties, would be treated as a single common material with which my collaborators could work. Our performances were informed by discussion and research upon the historical and cultural heritage of the site, with our compositions punctuated by discussion upon the religious and social connotations of its location and utility. The prior experiences and extramusical specialities of my performers – an expert in site-specific sound-recording, a Theologian, and a statistician for the local council - were fed into these discussions, allowing us to further blur the distinction between art-making and a more general social practice.

And going even further… The full report starts on page 113 of this document:

sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/68361/1/Hignell-Tully%2C%20Daniel%20Alexander.pdf

-Daniel Alexander Hignell

credits

released May 24, 2019

Daniel Alexander Hignell: piano, organ, saxophone, percussion, voice.
James Mather: recording/engineering, drums, percussion, guitar.
Kev Nickells: Violin, guitar, percussion, voice.
John Guzek: Violin, French horn.

Mixed by Daniel Alexander Hignell.

ISA-020

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Infinite Sync Louisville, Kentucky

Multi-genre label releasing albums from a roster of international artists.

Pricing on digital:
$1 = Singles
$2 = EPs
$3 = LPs

contact / help

Contact Infinite Sync

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Drawn in Yards Upon the Sea Defence (a Process of Line-making part 4), you may also like: