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Solo
2008
7 min.
Electronics
Soprano
More Details
- Program Notes
- The text is not mine – nor anyone’s; it was delivered as a spam email, with the subject heading "Scintillator". Spammers use software that strings together sentence fragments of online Public Domain texts, as a way of getting past email spam filters. This software is sort of like an computerized John Cage, strolling on an e-beach, picking up seashells without any interest in order or context. And sometimes, the result is striking. My approach as a composer was first to make my own guesses as to what text-strings come from the same material (bhishma, bahlika, vena etc. made it clear that this is the case), and where the material changes. I treated some words as pivots between sources, whereas other changes are instantaneous. Then worked instinctively, treating each text fragment with full compositional seriousness, only consciously connecting my musical material when I had decided that two texts shared an origin. The shifts between material are frequently as though a radio station has been suddenly switched – although this is a radio that only plays solo vocal music (perhaps with imagined accompaniments). My setting contains some humour, certainly, but ultimately Scintillator is a mystical piece. The text is the voice of The Internet: sublimely random, beautifully infinite. The singer is a medium for all music, and this is what she channels in these few minutes. (Alex Eddington, 2009) In 2020 we reimagined Scintillator as the last (and strangest) vocal track on my debut album "A Present From a Small Distant World" (Redshift Records 2021). The electronic static and vocal processing separates Kristin Mueller-Heaslip's voice into 4 distinct characters, who sometimes share a syllable or two. The theme of the album is a record launched into space for an unknown, possibly non-existent alien audience... Scintillator is our last transmission, thus the farthest from the familiarity of our solar system. There was no sense in notating the electronic part because it was all in post-production (other than changing how we recorded) and I couldn't possibly tell you what we did, exactly. Enjoy the cold, staticky loneliness of this version of Scintillator. (Alex Eddington, 2023)
- Recording Notes
- From the album "A Present From a Small Distant World" (Redshift Records, February 19 2021) Vocals: Kristin Mueller-Heaslip Electronics: Alex Eddington Recorded by: Paul Talbott at Union Sound Company Editing and Mixing: Paul Talbott Mastering: Sage Kim at Lacquer Channel "Toronto composer Alex Eddington's unorthodox debut album A Present from a Small Distant World is many different things all at once. Sometimes dark, sometimes downright silly, certain moments bear a resemblance to traditional art song, whereas on other occasions Eddington unfurls strange synthetic textures. Its uncharacteristically broad aesthetic reach is matched by its temporal span. Traversing — and often revisiting — music from the past 18 years, it serves as a portrait of his close collaborative relationship with soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, who plays a number of different protagonists throughout the album. While its nearly two-decade coverage accounts for a certain amount of the album's gleeful heterogeneity, this can also be attributed to its underlying inspiration, which is revealed in the opening cut. There a faded-xerox-choir of Mueller-Heaslips intones Jimmy Carter's 1977 speech that launched the Voyager spacecraft and its so-called Golden Record—a phonographic disc containing an encyclopedic dog's breakfast of earthly texts, images, and music—into space. "The chances that an alien civilization will intercept and decode the record are not high," explains Eddington, "but there is something wonderful about sending greetings hurtling outward." ... Scintillator's gibberish text...was excavated from Eddington's spam folder. Mueller-Heaslip imbues it with maximum urgency, her intensity only magnified by searing electronic effects that Eddington integrated for this recording." (Nick Storring)
- Record Label
- Redshift Records
- Ensemble Name
- Kristin Mueller-Heaslip