This piece stems from a plan to play sax as a duo with my friend Floa. Sadly that couldn't happen (covid cancellation), so I added the modular, originally planning to create a self-playing patch to react to and improvise over. Then I found I was rather enjoying creating the modular drones, so that became almost an equal part of the piece. I had also planned to record the acoustic sound of the sax and mix it in, but it turned out the neighbours' builders were doing a lot of drilling during the time I'd set to record, so the recording became electronic only - which has maximised the textural nature of the piece, removing much of the detail of the construction.
The field recordings used are from my local area of Edinburgh. The opening one is the sound of me entering our very empty (and if I'm honest, slightly spooky) house just after we bought it almost four years ago. The closing one is me entering our now very full house, just a couple of weeks ago, after a few years that none of us could've predicted.
A video of the performance, with patch notes, is here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0I05P0YhA
Recorded for the Modular World livestream, 19th December 2021. Watch the original, including an interview after the performance, here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=huLfp85oK2E
released December 20, 2021
Andrew Ostler - tenor saxophone, modular synthesizer
Composed, recorded and mastered by Andrew Ostler.