REVEIL 2020 PROJECTS


Lee Patterson-Homework 2


Homework 2

Lee Patterson

Start: 02/05 22:00 UTC+1

Highfield Road, Prestwich, Manchester.

Performances to microphone/webstream using home made instruments and amplified processes and objects in accompaniment to and improvising alongside the external sounds of this corner of North Manchester.
The Covid 19 crisis and its' accompanying lockdown allowed a widely acknowledged shift in the sounds around us, with much media attention being payed to the spring time bird calls and songs. 
Here in my neighbourhood of Prestwich, just north of Manchester, the sound world has been dominated since the early 1970's by the M60/M62 motorway and it's ever-present scour of noise. Reduction in traffic, as acknowledged elsewhere, has opened up the sound world to allow greater definition, removing the haze of noise (to use one too many visual metaphors!). Indeed, the sound of the motorway itself is once again interesting to listen to, possibly. There's definition and a level of clarity in this layered, industrial soundscape not heard by these ears since the 1980's... This presents a possibility, to return and re-examine this often hated yet, if I'm honest, influential sound. 
By playing alongside and within it rather than attempting to avoid or cancel it out, I will fuse sounds from my practice of the last 22 years with the sounds that have dominated my life of the last 48.
Since writing the above text, road traffic has increased over the last few days as drivers flout the lockdown rules and some of that sonic definition has been lost to the cut of the grey noise. There remains however, enough of interest - half-buried tones, passing glissandi and textural shifts, to make it an interesting if challenging musical partner. 
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