Kilim

Kilim (electroacoustic music, 1993)

For Juliette.

The excitement, for me, in electroacoustic music lies in the ability to deal with illusion in sound. Illusions of “real” or imaginble things; illusions of surreal or transformed things and illusions of abstract things: objects, spaces or events. Kilim is an attempt to explore these worlds through, largely, instrumental sounds. But rather than articulate the traditional materials of music, the sounds articulate snapshots of the instruments which are often transformed beyond recognition in to worlds where only the sense of energy present in their playing is felt.

Some audiences find electroacoustic music for tape alone difficult to listen to without visual stimulation from performers on stage. Kilim attempts to address this by taking instrumental improvisation as its source material. The work is concerned with keeping fragments of recognisable instrumental sound and retaining their sense of “played” energy, whilst using the sounds at the same time to create more abstract ‘acousmatic’ gestures.

The piece is built around a series of trajectories which act as triggers and cadences, or underpin longer passages, steering the pacing of the music using dozens of short sounds combined to make dramatic gestures or textures.

Selected for the Prix Noroit, 1994; Won 3rd prize in the 16th Luigi Russolo Competition, 1994.

Published on CD Prix International Noroit-Leonce Petitot 1993 (NOR-3 MUSIDISC 244992) and Klang (NMC D035)