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Lookup NU author(s): Dr William Edmondes
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Virginia Pipe began in 2004. The project consists of composing beat-based music that appropriates the instrumental vocabulary of dance floor sub-genres (such as drum & bass and UK garage), infiltrating it with a predilection for the atonality of European modernism and the rhythmic diversity of free improviation. The first album, Bahnhof Zum Bahnhof (2004-5) was made entirely on the train between York and Newcastle on the commute to and from work. The sketchbook approach of the Gwilly Edmondez dictaphone recordings were certainly an important precedent in their tendency to adopt creative environments as and where circumstance might dictate. Almost the whole album was made by preparing sequenced tracks using a palm-top computer (Palm Tungsten T5), which were then overdubbed with sampler/dictaphone improvisations on a pocket-sized digital four-track (Korg PXR4). The drums for several tracks on Bahnhof Zum Bahnhof were programmed in a way that sought to recreate, from memory subject to free license, phrases and gestures of certain well-known free improv drummers, such as Roger Turner, Paul Hession and Steve Noble. It is this particular approach – composing very quickly in a manner that seeks to emulate free improv spontaneity – that is most prevalent on Floorpoon. The atonality and the rhythmic angularity that dominate Floorpoon are set against an implied background of unerring repetition. The frequent snapshot loops that momentarily emerge at various points between tracks suggest a manic suppression of some ‘normal’ state. [EXAMPLES] From the sequenced tracks to the improvised overdubs sampling is the only sound source: all the drum kits were made by using conventional (within the ‘beat music’ work) methods of sampling single drum hits, like kick drum, hi-hat and snare.
Author(s): Virginia Pipe
Publication type: Digital or Visual Media
Publication status: Published
Year: 2005
Source Publication Date: 2007
Publisher: Kakutopia
Place Published: UK
Type: Audio CD
URL: http://www.kakutopia.com
