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Two music students from Guernsey who are in their third year at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester have used local cultural and political references to influence an electronic music composition.
Blair Taylor and Harvey Falla - both alumni of the Guernsey Music Centre – have created a 30-minute piece entitled ‘GIVE-AND-TAKE’ which includes recordings and audio references captured in Guernsey.
Among them is an excerpt from the popular local song Sarnia Cherie and speeches made in States’ debates.
Mr Taylor is a violinist and Mr Falla is studying double bass. Their project was undertaken during Lab Week at their College. It provided an opportunity for students to experiment with performance ideas that fall outside of their usual classical music studies.
Electronic music was an obvious choice for the pair as they write and perform techno music in their band Dioscuri.
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Pictured: A clip of the pair performing their piece during Lab Week.
"We decided to base it on Guernsey because we can both relate to the same experiences and memories of the island and it allowed the performance to feel very personal to us," said Mr Taylor.
Mr Falla did not expect to be given this opportunity to experiment.
"There’s no electronic music course at the college and most of the students study classical instruments like us, but lots of composers are getting more interested in bringing electronic elements into the concert hall," said Mr Falla.
The performance was separated into five movements like a classical sonata or symphony. For each movement, the musicians had an idea of the style and sound they wanted to produce. But the rest was improvised.
"We usually play a mix of electronic dance music genres, but this certainly wasn’t dance music. It would come under the genre of live electronic music performance," said Mr Falla.
Pictured: The performance space featured screens and 36 speakers.
There was also a visual element to the performance animated and filmed by the two students and then distorted in real time in response to the music, using audio-reactive software.
Mr Falla said excerpts from States’ meetings contributed to a collage of other sounds collected for the piece.
"The content was irrelevant to us and random parts of the speeches were faded in and mangled during the performance," he said.
The performance was in a space using 36 speakers in the ceiling and walls and eight subwoofers - speakers designed to produce very low bass frequencies - allowing the sound to move around the room and spatialise. The visuals were displayed on three large screens and the audience sat in a circle surrounding the performers.
"The feedback was very positive and we were pleased that it didn’t shock people as much as we expected. We also feel that we’ve now put our foot in the door towards getting more opportunities like this both within and outside of [college]," said Mr Falla.
Pictured (top): Harvey Falla (left) and Blair Taylor.
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