Study of Fragile Objects #1, for 2 loudspeakers
A collection of recorded sounds taken from glass bottles, marbles falling, and a wind-up music box with a broken crank. Study of Fragile Objects #1 derives materials from seemingly forsaken items, as if found in a child’s abandoned toy box. In this piece, everything is almost. Sounds are spliced, distorted and recombined, obscuring sound sources to different degrees, wandering between liminal soundscapes that thread between reality and hidden sonic worlds.
To drift, float, but never land for 2 Keyboardists
Performed by b-l duo (Bertram Wee and Lynette Yeo)
“Made a promise to the child who understands, what it’s like to drift, float, but never land.”
* * *
Where I’m from, people are always moving. It’s a fast-paced society; there’s a constant need to have a goal and be headed in that direction. To get somewhere, to achieve something, to be someone. Anyone. The fear of going nowhere outweighs everything, as one myopically chases for a destination to land.
This piece goes nowhere. Perhaps, it seems to go somewhere, suggested by constantly shifting sonic spaces and momentum that points towards a movement in specific directions. But it never quite settles, at least, not for long. Zooming in and out plays a significant role. A 4-note motif underpins the entire piece --- simplistic, repetitive, with a child-like curiosity. One may even think it’s obsessive. Within passages where this material is built upon in a cellular manner, there are hints of trajectories. Zooming out, however, paints a different picture. Different soundscapes emerge, textures woven with similar materials, rarely with a destination in mind.
There’s a constant return to the cellular treatment of this 4-note motif. I liken it to a safe heaven, as if it’s predictable, stable, certain. Yet, each time one returns, something changes. The material slowly loses its identity and eventually falls away.
* * *
“It’ll be okay. After all, this is my Neverland.”