Redislocations

Programme Note

Relocation/dislocation: Musical material can develop organically or it can be instantaneously transformed beyond all recognition. In order to create a large, interesting structure, I thought it desirable, in this piece at least, to consider both approaches: Saxophone samples are taken out of their original context and relocated in foreign structures. By extracting segments of sound and manipulating them through reversal, equalisation, transposition and amplification, the original samples (and the sounds that were created from them) are transformed and re-transformed into shapes that bear little or no resemblance to their parent sounds. Structural processes based on repetition are distorted by seemingly alien sounds tearing the musical fabric and beginning new processes whose relationship to former ones only becomes apparent as the piece progresses. Dislocation becomes the focal point, but as new yet repeated sounds follow each other with shorter and shorter gaps, a cycle of interruptions creates its own continuous structure.

Redislocations is dedicated to the memory of my oldest and dearest friend Michael and his girlfriend Louise who visited me while the work was in progress and died off the coast of New Zealand before it was finished.