SUMMER 2020 - POSTCARD #8

The music we make has become place based, it happens here. Perhaps it could only happen here. It grows from connections, mistakes, intrusion, exploration.

And this is early in a process... just a beginning. These are chance moments - the coincidence of a blackcap’s song in the feedback sounds, a folk song as a helicopter passes, the rhythm of strings against a summer’s thunderstorm... “the configuration formed by chance events at the moment of observation”1.

A song thrush bathes noisily in water caught from the storm. Rain dances a careless stream through the summer leaves of a stricken young ash tree.

And increasingly other sounds are returning. The traffic. And also sounds of protest and disquiet. These shape our awareness, and permeate all with sadness and unrest.

These lo-fi recordings capture a moment, and “provide knowledge that something has happened”.

As John Cage puts it, recordings are “...of no more value than a postcard”2.

Postcards then. From Godley Moor. With love.

 

 

1. C.G.Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal

2. Michael Nyman, Experimental Music.

partly the result of design work towards a permaculture diploma, this series of 4 seasonal collections of 'postcards' were sent out during successive lockdowns over 2020 - 2021.

 

The 4 albums grew from a felt sense of relationship with this place - godley moor - and its sound scape, the birds watching us, our growing recognition of them and their patterns and songs … a feeling of wanting to be part of it, to belong in this community.

 

The albums are collections of local field recordings, sound collages, improvised musical responses to the soundscape - alongside traditional / self written songs.

 

The albums were released as digital downloads accompanied by limited edition 7”x5” art cards. Each collection of cards combined original artwork, poetry and text and were printed on 100% recycled, uncoated 350gsm unbleached card.

 

The initial Summer Postcards were worked in b&w, and the album was made 'Folk Album of the Month' by The Guardian newspaper.