Available to listen to and buy at Bandcamp
Release date #1: 21 July 2021; #2 29 November 2025, #3 23 December 2023, #4 08 November 2025
Format: digital download. Artwork and typography by Landschaft.
This archive work originated around 2007 and I rediscovered it in a review of my sound and visual works. The cover art is a photograph of sogetsu taken in the Brisbase Gallery of Modern Art in 2017. The sound piece languished years waiting for the magical association with sogetsu to arrive. I remastered the work and segmented the original 2 hour work to six parts.
Sogetsu is the modern re-imagination of traditional ancient 'ikebana', the Japanese art of flower sculpture. A less formalised expression of the art. The cover art is of the vertical vase form, 'Nageire'. I have more to say, artistically, about sogetsu and have suffixed this work #1 in anticipation of future works. To see sogetsu in an appropriate setting was for me a mind opening experience.
Sogetsu 2 is perhaps the most minimal of my works to date. A simple shifting monolith of gently evolving tones. Play at low volume on headphones in a quiet space. I stripped this work back from a more complex initial form having read an interview given by Holger Czukay who elaborated on simplicity. The spatial positioning of a few sonic components Binaural downmixed make this a work filling the subjective 3d void, taking the 'ambient' paradigm a step further than the mainstream.
This aleatoric (chance music) happened as I was constructing a new Absynth patch. It lent itself well to some controlled randomisation; triggers of notes in an ascending phrigian scale. There are just three layers - 2x effected (granularised) brass and a shifting undercurrent drone. This work sits very well within my harmonius sogetsu theme. An empty room but for one white chrysanthamum.
In listening to this work and writing four months after publication, I am convinced self-appraisal benefits from a rest after the close focus of creation. So it is with this work. I was not entirely persuaded of the validity of Sogetsu no3. Now I am. It says something. My Sogetsu series is intentionally arid. I have stripped the human out of my music practice, separating the Sogetsu pieces from the emotional-historical contexts in my thematic works. The Sogetsu metaphore is clear. Sogetsu Ikebana is concerned with the definition of space through the ultra-discipline of the Japanses aesthetic. Creating a harmonius relationship between 'organic' materials and the locations in which they are placed. My moment of epiphany: viewing a Sogetsu Ikebana piece in Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art. It all made sense: I had to translate that physical form into noise vibrations.
sogetsu #4 This entry, number four uses marimba, struck bowl, choral samples and electronics - mainly the sublime Strymon Starlab reverb (used as an instrument).
This is a very striped down spare work. There are two verions 'maximal' and 'minimal'; the latter the result of the happy accident of forgetting to switch my Proteus 2000 synth on before making the recording.
The struck gongs are an implementation of the classic Eurorack Rings > Clouds combination.
This is a hybrid work. Eurorack, Synth, Sample library work, each component does what it does best, with MIDI duties handled by managed generative cycles of modal scales (E minor Dorian, E Mixolodian, G Major Ionian) in Cubase piped out to externals.
There is a lot of silence and 'air in this work. Production has been left fairly simple. Little EQing was needed, filling the space was enabled by 1st order ambisonics downmixed to stereo which I think works very nicely. The DAW based audio sources were routed through Valhalla Supermassive providing added space. The master out was bridged with Studer tape saturation emulation and last of all, True Balance with reference audio was used to monitor EQ (this work sits within the EQ range of Eno's Apollo).
The cover art is a bunch of organic kale from the wonderful Trinity Farm Organics, Cossall a few miles away from my Nottingham base. And after the photographs were taken we had it for dinner.