extravehicular

9 ‘ 19

score | extravehicular.mp3

This piece is built over a thick ambience drone, which is composed from a drum sample being played extremely slowing – at a speed that oscillates back and forth, playing it in reverse too. The main instrumental accompaniment to this is a “probability” drum machine. This specifically written program uses programmed percentages to determine the likelihood of playing each drum. The resulting drum score is hazardous, lending itself to the industrial samples used. Together the drone and drum parts offer a very ‘digitally’ imbued version of electronica. Against this an acoustic piano is juxtaposed, to provide a small and distorted element of human melody – distorted in the way the piano is produced and cut up to add unnatural elements to the instruments distinctive sound. Aesthetically, the piece sits somewhere around the Industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails and the minimal glitch sound of the Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto collaboration. The piece is also greatly inspired by the “Odyssey” series by Arthur C. Clarke; this piece is too a snapshot of a human operating in space. The droning ambience part would here be emblematic of the machinery in such a scene, while the piano would be representative of the human.