Distortions of Memory

by Leisure Thief

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Distortions of Memory is a One Page Score commissioned by Vancouver New Music to accompany Gwenda Ellwood's graphic score "Tribe of Humans".
The piece starts with a skipping record played on an old Califone turntable. Fade in a Hallicrafters shortwave radio, cello and a dreamy Prophet 6 synth pad. In field recordings, a stereo pair of microphones capture bicycles whirring along the seawall beside Science World and, later, dramatic impacts inside the long metal tube-slide from the nearby playground. Vocals were recorded on a handheld cassette player while walking through Mt. Pleasant along the Flats behind Emily Carr and beside the train tracks.
The recording process started as a sync'd hardware jam with drum machines and synthesizers. The resulting 12 minute improvisation acted as scaffolding for overdubbing and mixing in more and more sounds. Eventually most of this original beat-driven session was edited out in favour of the free floating soundscape that arose around it. An open autoharp is lightly strummed as the denser section melts away into the ether, before returning to earth for the stunning epilogue.


Gwenda Ellwood's graphic score is pictured here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whybin3Z3b0

The music took on its own life as it came together, but when interpreting Tribes of Man as a graphic score this is how it began:

1: soft floating sounds as if we were a bird flying high above Stanley Park

2: circular forms: drum sounds (kick and toms) a skipping record player, and a field recording of bikes on the sea wall.

3: cello for the black charcoal / dry brush marks: and musique concrete cut up for the scrabbly sketchy pencil lines

4: 3 crosses represented as 3 impact events where the music stops and resets

5: vocals - a msg to the old gods

credits

released May 19, 2020
Sync'd instruments: Korg Volca FM + SQ-1 / Volca Drum / 2 X Moog Mother 32s + Strymon Flint / DSI Tempest + Strymon El Capistan / MFB Tanzbar

Overdubbed instruments: 4/4 Gliga Cello / Sequential Prophet 6 + Strymon Big Sky & run through a Sony TC-570 1/4” Reel to Reel / Elektron Digitakt / Oscar Schmidt OS73C Autoharp

Samples, Field Recordings & SFX: 1450K Califone Turntable + Strauss Waltz / Hallicrafters S-40B SW Radio / Bikes along the sea wall, sky train and Quebec St. traffic / Steam Iron / Clare Hecla open piano harp / Danelectro N-10 Honeytone tinfoil feedback / Olds Trombone gurgling water / Slinky / The Epic Frying Pan / Treeworks Tre 20 Music Tree

Artwork: sticker on a storage container in False Creek Flats

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Leisure Thief Vancouver, British Columbia

Bent electricity, musique concrète, pillowy beats, sci-fi FX, fluid situations and surprise >> beauty : Lee Hutzulak plays synths, samplers, guitar pedals and sometimes sings. Some of his other projects include:
Zen Escalator, Moth Mouth, Dixie's Death Pool, Hot Towers ... more

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