While the lighting of the electric campfire keeps the work of Pierre Schaffer a little warmer than 21st century alien contributions to musique concrete, tracks are still being made and the line continues. Push a button, turn a key, the machine is on, droning along with its hum and repetition of moving parts. In the opening of this piece the sounds are heavily processed, creating a dynamic to the mechanical and industrial sounds associated with early musique concrete. After the ignition switch of the imaginary machine is turned on (by whose hand?) there is a repetition of digital elements that become rhythmic. This section of the machine then becomes distant, perhaps as the operator moves away from the control station and walks around the large machine. In early works of musique concrete, recordings of voices were often used for creating disembodied human elements, and so due to an unseen hand turning a machine on, there is an imaginary presence within the context of this work. The piece ends with two field recordings made with a portable tape recorder (a robust sound library is essential, as it is the sound artist’s palette.) The first recording (2017) is in the car when it was raining, featuring engine sounds and metronomic windshield wipers, the other (2013) was in a New York subway station, featuring a busker, the resonating voices of a large crowd, and a train, whose past fades away into the future.

As an interdisciplinary artist, I have created the writing and the sound for this piece to be understood as one, establishing the electronic composer as an invisible presence whose voice is being heard.

Erica Benay Fallin: electronics and tapes