Putting Blackfriars Bridge in an exquisite frame

Mar 31, 2015, 10:47 AM

Matthew Lambert's Oblique Strategy-guided mix of his Blackfriars Bridge recording. He writes:

"Card 1 What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain? I took the words "increase" and "reduce" quite literally, often thinking back to them when applying EQ to the initial source or filtering to the resulting loops. I also used a fair bit of blank tape between cuts to create more space/silence than I usually have.

The suggestion of "maintaining" something was used more fortuitously. I decided to pre make some loops before dubbing the audio onto them, however, one had some existing audio from another set of experiments; an odd timed synth line. I opted to keep the old audio and run it at a slower speed, creating the center sound that is pretty bass heavy in the first few minutes.

Card 2 Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame This arguably had a greater effect on the final piece. The idea of a framed blank or silence informs the composition. The near silence occurs almost in the middle time wise and is preceded and followed by two relatively similar passages of sound. I was already pretty certain that I was going to have to focus on the cello, as it runs throughout the majority of the source recording, but the term exquisite led me to use more layers than I initially intended."