Lambent Horizons by Susanne Peters and Helen Bledsoe

Lambent Horizons was recorded with flutist Susanne Peters on May 20, 2021 in the party room of my apartment building, which has its original 1974 decor. Located underground next to our garage, it has a distinctive atmosphere. I prepared a number of fx chains and patches, with lots of midi triggering and simulated control voltage. (No money or space for the real thing!)
Susanne is an uninhibited yet balanced improviser, at home on the bass, concert, and piccolo flutes as well as on vocals. A real inspiration to work with. I hope you enjoy the results of our collaboration.

I. Swallowed- Internal landscapes, sometimes muffled, sometimes vast and resonating, dominate this track that features bass flute and vocals. If you digested feedback, it might sound like this.

II. Jumblies- "Far and few are the lands where Jumblies live, their heads are green and their hands are blue, and they went to sea in a sieve" - this is a text from Edward Lear's "The Dong with a Luminous Nose". Jumblies were a musical lot, singing, playing the flute, and dancing in circles by moonlight. The piccolo sounds depict their landscape, songs and a turbulent voyage on their perforated craft.

III. Garage Party- This is the sort of party where we hear double as well as see double. The voice is mostly quite distinct, but it bifurcates and at times becomes indistinguishable from the bass flute sounds and the background noise. Inspired by the decor where we recorded, I attempted to patch a slowed-down version of a triple morphing bandpass filter inspired by the Buchla 291e. The result on the voice pretty trippy, especially on top of the grunged up bass flute sound, which was inspired by Mr. Bill's multiband OTT obsession.

IV. Cosmic Marbles- What if gravity took a vacation and the planets, asteroids and comets sloshed around in the heliosphere like marbles inside a tambourine, blown about by the solar wind? They all just might break into song.
I also named this Marbles in honor of the Mutable Instruments module Marbles, of which I own a software clone thanks to Audible Instruments and VCV Rack. It contributed greatly to the movement of sounds in this track.

V. Killer Fun- The sound of the flute at its extremes is the basis for this improvisation. The electronics set up expectant echos, but follow through only on their own whim. The echo-delay system is too hell-bent on fun to produce a stable listening environment. At heart it is a cat-and-mouse chase of long and short sounds with their echos, which sometime precede their source in a wicked game of time-travel.

Playing flute, warping sounds.

helenbledsoe.com
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