1. Chequerboard : A Year in Sligo

'To start the project I gathered sounds from the Model Niland gallery building here in Sligo, Ireland and put together a loose sound portrait of the space that meanders through three seperate passages linked by the sounds of me walking on various wooden floors in different rooms in the gallery. The third passage is based on a dictaphone recording of a guitar piece written with my year in Sligo in mind.'
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2. Jimmy Behan : Untitled

'My piece attempts to describe an exaggerated sonic portrait, or caricature, of my own empty house while I am sleeping. Playing on the old question of “if a tree falls in the forest…”, I tried to imagine what the house, and various objects in it, (ornaments, cutlery, clocks, the ticking of an alarm sensor) might sound like if it could hear itself as I slept. I imagined these sounds to be completely different to what I might hear were I to be awake listening to it.' > Read further

3. Loscil : The Sleep Machine

'I have long been interested in sleep, the unconscious and the subconscious when it comes to audio, listening and music.  With the birth of my first daughter I became particularly interested in sleep and how to get more of it.  I composed several pieces of simple drone music as an aid to our family to try to help us relax and sleep.  Jimmy’s piece led me back to some of these thoughts about sleep and particularly what role audio plays during sleep, getting us to sleep, meditation, relaxation, dreaming.' > Read further

4. Hulk : Nightly Sweetly

'As a continuation of the subject of sleep I tried to create something which represents the process of dreaming, a kind of release to the tension Jimmy and Scott created. If their music focused on the sound of places where we sleep or the transition into sleep from a conscious state then my piece is roughly intended as a kind of musical visitation, something which happens in the mind after we fall to sleep, – like a distant radio transmission rising out of silence and filling the void
for just a short time.' > Read further

5. Polly Fibre : Reconstructing the Incredible

An ongoing pursuit in my work is to attempt to engage haptically with things that are considered virtual. This piece is essentially a reconstruction of Hulks samples, using scissors sounds to cut into his digital audio. The original samples are arranged tightly together by basically starting them all at the same point and from this a loop is created and repeated throughout. Scissors samples are layered over this and a crude edit made at the point of each closing of the blades. > Read further

6. Pierre Bastien: Play Scissors Play

The scissors in Polly Fibre's piece reminded me of some traditional African bands using this object as a percussive instrument. They also reminded me of my own scissors player that I built about twelve years ago. It became obvious that my response should incorporate some of Polly Fibre's beautiful sounds to introduce my robotic scissors. I also liked the idea that the little sound sculpture makes the rhythms of my piece visible, while Polly Fibre made the editing of her piece audible.> Read further

7. Bibio: Hedged in

As a continuation/mutation on the scissors theme, I decided before making any compositional processes that I would use 1/4" reel to reel tape and a razor blade as a fundamental medium. I had a few audio files from Pierre which were short but had a common key, so I realised a good place to start would be to create tape loops using Pierre's samples, a razor blade, a splicing block, a chinagraph pencil and some splicing tape.
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8. Sunken Foal: A Beard of Mercury Switches

The idea is to imply a sense of interruption by creating sets and sub-sets of little tranquil audio components that can be switched between, brutally and abruptly. Each audio component (or loop) contains a sense of movement in order to emphasise the disturbance when it is switched on/off, so I recorded and processed instruments to convey temporal fluctuation.
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