The primary sonic material of this work comes directly from a studio-based improvisation made using analog modular synthesis techniques in conjunction with a plate reverb made from a sheet of scrap metal, a four-track reel to reel, and a tape delay unit, recorded in a single take.

I have recently become somewhat obsessed with miniature reel-to-reel tape recorders and have begun collecting them to use in performances as part of a giant, wonky, multi-tap delay / feedback system, and in sound installations featuring myriad tape loops in some sort of labyrinthine configuration…

The recorders themselves are very simple machines, and the mechanism for advancing the tape does not use a capstan motor like most reel-to-reel recorders or cassette players, but instead simply drags the tape across the head using a “rim-drive” system, which creates a great deal of “wow and fluttter” in the recordings.

Some of these recorders have speed controls, which allow you to squeeze longer recordings onto a tape (or play back tapes from machines that record at different speeds), but as you slow them down, playback becomes uneven, as the motor is not pulling with as much force, and friction causes the tape to catch. This produces pitch discrepancies that I find quite lovely, and give recordings of the spoken word a somewhat lilting quality. Others of these machines are simply in less great states of repair, which is perfectly understandable given their age (rim-drive recorders were most popular in the early sixties). These units crackle, buzz, hiss, and jerk the tape about — each recorder has its unique sonic fingerprint.

The majority of recorders I have salvaged have invariably come with tapes from their previous owners still inside them, their histories waiting to be discovered. These sorts of tapes were generally meant for voice recording, and were used for audio diaries and “letters” to loved ones (to such a great extent that the boxes they were sold in often included address boxes and a place for a stamp). I have spent a lot of time getting to know these tapes — not simply the messages they contain, but how they sound on each of the recorders.

It seemed important that I include the forgotten memories that I had unearthed, but in a way that emphasized the sonic qualities of the recordings rather than the words they contained (letting them bubble up into the listener’s consciousness), so I started digging through this strange archive, playing back the tapes and re-recording them while listening back to the improvised material, then added some additional sonic “glue,” and quickly stepped away.

This piece is a meditation on memory and loss, and trying to find reason amidst chaos; it is dedicated to the memory of Matthew Underwood, who has taught me so much about all of these things.