My piece represents the majestic, dark and industrial nature of London. My initial inspiration stemmed from the lack of inspiration – unable to find creativity in these trying times. I thought about what I could make my piece about – eventually using my very environment and emotions at the time to represent the realities of my piece. Travelling on the underground almost every day became this very monotonous cycle – especially being in lockdown where it would be the only time, I would leave my room – as I looked around on the tube, I felt a deep sense of monotony in the average Londoners masked faces. A very surreal feeling of cyclical boredom. I felt like this feeling juxtaposed with the grandeur of London felt like a very weird oxymoron – as if the two shouldn’t be together. This is London – the grand capital of the UK and yet it lay dormant, asleep in this time of great uncertainty. For me, the track evokes both a sense of time as well as place – more specifically London during the coronavirus pandemic.
I started off by collecting some samples from elephant and castle station of street preachers. I didn’t initially intend to make them the focus but their loud voices dominated the soundscape – so i made it the focus. I then layered it over some other street preachers i heard in Tooting. I felt this was significant in developing the very majestic nature of the track. I wanted something very spiritual – gothic almost. I had taken the idea of layering the two vocals and atmospheres on-top of each from the song “Growing Pains 3” by rapper, Logic. The idea to create a building up introduction that eventually dropped dramatically was also inspired by this track. I then focused on the drums. My initial idea was to create a drill beat that represented the urban London environment paired with an organ like synth to represent the spiritual/etherial nature of the piece – however the course of my piece changed for a more sonically cinematic experience. After listening to Kanye Wests “BLKKK SKKKN HEAD” i developed the sound of my drums and the nature of the pieces personality – fearce, powerful, grandiose yet unnerving, shy and quiet, an oxymoron of emotions to represent the chaotic nature of London during the lockdowns. I added reverb and EQ to bring out the strong low ends of the hard hitting powerful drums which i wanted to pair with a moving train to represent movement and speed and the sporadic nature of London – moving between feeling of fast and slow, lively and dead, energetic and then desolate. I wanted to capture the feeling of being filled with the sense of unnerving anxiety one minute and a hollow emptiness the next. I used the build up of the intro to move into the drums and used volume automation to slowly increase the volume – paired with the sound of a moving underground train- that eventually dropped creating the basis and introduction of my piece- eventually leading on to the second – more aggressive and grandiose part.
The second part is filled with stronger drums and and a synth that sounds like radio interference. This part sounds almost ‘tribal’ representing the scale of London as a capital. I have some more metallic field recordings and pair them with a choir with reverb to add atmosphere. This part continues for a few bars before again dropping to a more calmer part of the piece that has a mix of water crashing on a shore samples and a more peaceful sounding synth that finishes the piece off.