“Floating World”

-Reflections on Thirty-Six Views of Newland Island

by

Tapes and Topographies

[“Tapes and Topographies” is the recording name of American composer Todd Gautreau]

 

cd cover for Floating World [Polaroid 078.36]

 
 

Extracts from On “Floating World” by JSH. 20th October 2022

…….Music and sound are major components of both my apprehension of landscape and my practice as an artist. Sound is not only a constituent of landscape but it also evokes ideas and memories of place. Although music is tethered to a time register, where paintings have no particular “time”, there are clear parallels between the structures of music and paintings; tonal balance, layers, repeating forms, and improvisation are all terms that can be applied to both disciplines…….

……I have long harboured a desire to combine my work with that of a composer but have been wary of encroaching onto someone else’s creative territory. When I first heard Todd’s music, a little more than one year ago on Elizabeth Alker’s BBC Radio 3 “Unclassified” programme, it struck an immediate chord with my Newland Island project. The underlying drones and interweaving waves of sound that characterise Todd’s compositions create the patterns, and complex harmonic geometry that inform my sense of Cornwall’s landscape………

Track Listing:

  1. the floating world

  2. entropy

  3. ontologies

  4. diffraction

  5. ma間*

  6. counterpoint

  7. light echoes

  8. dusk

  9. penn tir**

…….As for the resulting compositions I consider the 9 tracks that comprise “Floating World” to be independent views of Newland Island in their own right. ”Floating World” is a soundscape that gives up its details slowly, through repeated listening. This is generous music. It is music that creates space for imagination and rewards time spent. These are compositions for the long-term, a quality that I aspire to achieve with my paintings……..

 

Released 19th November 2022

on

Whitelabrecs

as a limited edition cd [sold out] and digital download

 
 

* ma間 (lit. “gap, space, pause”) is the Sino-Japanese character used to convey the idea of negative space. It suggests the importance of empty space- the concept of this space as a positive entity.

** penn tir in the Cornish language means “Head” (penn) “Land” (tir). Newland Island forms a counterpoint with the Pentire peninsula.