Underneath the noise, the bell still tolls

Jan 08, 2017, 01:31 PM

Part of the Sacred Spaces project - find out more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sacredspaces

Reimagined by Mike Pursley.

"The file chosen due to an interest in bells, with some irony the final draft was not bell-like, and instead came to resemble a digital laptop scape. My initial plan was to degrade the bell into a sort of time-worn ambience, but try as I might to distress the signal, the bell’s attack was too strong, too insistent. I decided then to break the bell apart, to change the state of its makeup. Metal base for an alchemical transformation. The original field recording went to tape, the tape recorded back into the laptop, the file scrambled by a Helium Vocal effect, the scrambled file played back and simultaneously recorded, and then simultaneously recorded once again. Three increasingly shattered playbacks running as one to produce the resulting version. Even then, underneath the noise, the signal still tolls."