Output details

Phantom Power : 8-channel acousmatic music

Phantom Power is related to Force Fields (2006), commissioned by the Cologne-based Thürmchen Ensemble. Thürmchen’s conductor, Erik Oña, had stressed that they specifically wanted me to compose ‘in my normal way’ – i.e. acousmatically, starting from the sonic properties of instrumental recordings of the group – and Force Fields is described in the score as ‘musique concrète for 8 instrumentalists and fixed sounds.’

Whilst working on Force Fields (which I had already started referring to as FF in my notes and file names), I became increasingly aware that, in a purely acousmatic context, without live performers and when the material is subjected to signal processing in the studio, only a ‘ghostly presence’ of the original instrument would remain, even though some of its physical power might still be perceived. This aspect of the Thürmchen recordings was explored in Phantom Power (PP in my shorthand). The musical meanings of ff and pp (fortissimo and pianissimo) also seemed an apt reflection of the respective characters of the two pieces – one rather clear and brazen, the other veiled, hidden, subdued and reflective, yet always with the lurking sense that there could be an eruption at any time, an unstoppable, overwhelming surge of power.

An invitation to be the first Parry Williams Visiting Composition Fellow at Bangor University gave me the opportunity to develop these ideas. The location also provided two additional sonic metaphors: recordings of a turbine on a wind farm on Anglesey and pieces of slate from Snowdonia being handled, scraped and knocked together. The images of force and power involved in the creation of geological layers over past millennia and in the potentially limitless availability of the wind to provide future power are so clear that I hardly need mention them.

As the work is purely electroacoustic, no score has been submitted.