Second Square To None

Sunken Foal - Crag Hill by SSTN Noise


This week's noise series features a short film soundtrack by one half of Ambulance and all of Sunken Foal, Dunk Murphy.



Crag Hill (2009) from Anne Maree Barry on Vimeo.

What are your reasons / motives for making music, and how you arrived at this style?

This piece was written as a soundtrack to a film by director Anne Marie Barry called "Crag Hill". One element of the narrative that stood out to me was the inability of the protagonist to decipher the water and wind surrounding her, i.e.: the rain. The film expresses the confused state of the character so this drove me to place her in an aural backdrop of water droplet configurations. I recorded 128 drips into various sized containers and then set about arranging them into different mathematical patterns. The drips could be cycled through consecutively at a varying range of rate up to note frequencies so that tonal timbres could be achieved and manipulated. These experiments were then convolved with a variety of recordings (impulse responses) which contained volatile but harmonic qualities. All of this was intended to echo the character trying to perceive the phenomenon of rain over the time it took to make the journey "home".

What sort of environment it is intended for (home listening, really loud in a meat lorry, or whatever!) / intended effect on listener?

The film is intended as a gallery piece but I played the soundtrack on my headphones while I was at mass last Sunday eating stacks of communion down the back of the church and it really worked.

What sort of equipment you use (e.g. computer, hardware, home made gear, circuit bent stuff etc.) do you use to make your sounds?

I used a pair of large diaphragm microphones to record the drips and the PotPourri Max/Msp object "el.player~" by Eric Lyon to control them. A Yamaha CS30 and Rat guitar pedal to create the impulse responses.

Any memorable noise-related incidents/ interesting gig anecdotes?

I once played a live gig in the Croft in Bristol on top of a brand spanking new pinewood coffin complete with crucifixes. It's affect on the sound quality was negligible.


Info on upcoming gigs, preferred web address, releases etc.

Venetian Snares - May 19th Crawdaddy
www.myspace.com/wesunkthefoal
http://www.annemareebarry.com/