This recording came about from a hunch I had about a screen in my house. I affixed a contact microphone to it and it stayed there a long time before I had the opportunity to catch a fly in there. I shut a fly between the window and the screen and recorded it. We have nothing to thank but the fly for its contribution to this event. I apologize for causing its suffering. The screen essentially became an absorbent recording element that relays the fly's body structure in action.
This recording is an assembly. Throughout, at varying levels of intensity, you can hear the sound of a body falling to the ground as it bounces off tree branches. This sound composition is an attempt to describe an event I experience while in the army. A fellow soldier's parachute failed and I had to go find him in the woods. Tai Crash was created for a video and features Taichi Kitamura.
One of my favorites, Bombassed is a sound landscape/composition constructed of samples taken from industrial sound effects. It was an experiment with delay and equalization. Used, in addition to Tai Crash, in the video "Fugue."
Flood was my introduction to a love affair with sampling. It is built with a short sample of a piano piece. Velocity and pitch are the two elements that provide variation in the piece.
At a specific place outside of the Burlington Northern/Southern Pacific rail yard, freight trains descend to the water level at Interbay, Seattle, Washington. This is a sound composition using a sample of trains and their freight cars braking downhill. Once again, pitch and velocity are used.
Vehicle is a combination of two samples, one from the trapped fly and another, and the sound of air traffic along the flight path to Boeing field in Seattle, Washington. Using a custom made acoustical apparatus, I caught the sounds that override the whole composition. The apparatus creates an analog, horn-like reverberation much like that of a tube.
Helmut is a further reworking of the samples in "Vehicle," using again velocity and pitch.
Inspired by native flute and the lives and environment of Leroux Fine Apparel in Magnolia, Seattle, Washington, this piece was a spontaneous performance with the recorder. I had the opportunity to use the sound studio at Jack Straw Productions so I did a series of performances that included the recorder, voice/chanting, and bells.