Utopia: The Bells, The Bells (feat. David Riley)

For this project, Cities and Memory allocated to contributors sections of Holbein's image of Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

Square C4 is dominated by a church or other religious building, so I have taken religion as my topic. In Utopia, all religions are tolerated. In real-life, More was a hard-line Catholic, vehemently opposed to the Reformation and said to have approved of the sending of Protestants to the stake for heresy. “Utopia: C4” contrasts these two sides of the man. It is made up predominantly of recordings of church bells gratefully downloaded from those generous people at Freesound. Added to this, amongst other elements, is a field recording and some musical inserts of my own, a reading from Utopia (vox: David Riley) and a liberal sprinkling of Apple loops. The piece gets steadily more nightmarish as we move from the liberalism of Utopia to the reality of 16th century religious persecution (More himself was executed for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as Head of the Church of England, and was canonised in 1886).

Hear all the contributions at: citiesandmemory.com/utopia/

#sound art #Utopia #Sir Thomas More #religion #audio art #experimental #cities and memory