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CD
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SUBLIVE 002CD
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The new work commissioned by Aldeburgh Music continues the exploratory journey set out in Roly Porter's landmark Aftertime album, unraveling the strands of affinity and contrast between contemporary classical, industrial noise, and ritual electronics. Continuing the path of her contributory work on Aftertime, multi-instrumentalist Cynthia Millar performs on dobro and Ondes Martenot, a pioneering early electrical instrument from the 1920s, with her haunting arrangements based on traditional Scottish folk song "Henry Martin," forging an elegiac communion with Porter's dense textures, pulsing bass tones and dynamic atmospherics. The recording made within this vast concert hall breathes a unique residual intensity into the material, capturing the performative tension and acoustic beauty of the space, while evoking the sonic impact and transient delicacy of the music. The commission expands on Porter's investigations into the relationship between man, technology and nature with the piece crystallizing this vision, and in the process reverently mirroring the deeply-human themes present in the song's text and the haunted apparitions of visual artist Rod Maclachlan, whose projections accompanied the performance.
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