I’m in the process of carving raw musical material into a set of pieces loosely themed around the feelings I get from the landscape of the Penwith area of Cornwall. I’m working with a set of guitar improvisations and field recordings made in the area last December, and collaging, processing and generally interfering with the material in order to create a coherent suite of pieces. All seems to be going well, apart from not knowing where to stop – the raw material seems to be offering far too many possibilities. It’s a case of experimentation leading to a realisation of the music that exists somewhere in my head. I’ll know it when I hear it.
Here’s one of the more successful works-in-progress so far. ‘Zawn’ is a West Cornwall dialect word for ‘sawan’, which means ‘chasm’. It’s a channel into the cliffs where the sea swirls in and out, making booming, roaring sounds. Terrible and beautiful at the same time. All the sounds in this piece come from field recordings and acoustic guitars. Zawn
infolding 