Inspired by my time in Morocco in the late autumn of 2011, each mural represents an impression of the cultural life, landscape, and features of this wonderful country. Particularly, the diverse rhythms of a vast multi-layered nation, divided between the Atlantic Ocean, Sahara, and Atlas Mountain range, left an indelible impression on me. I call it the “lines of life.” For, in all its diversity, whether the peasant farmers tilling the land, the shantytown folk going about their daily business, or the complex wheeling and dealing of the marketers in Marrakech, Moroccan sights and sounds have woven their way into each sonic mural.
Emily Pütter's original paintings reflect not only her response to the visual splendour of the Moroccan landscape but to the materials of the environment and cultural aspects of the society.
http://www.musiczeit.com/album.php?album=2091&Michael+Neil+Moroccan+Murals
A music video by Andy Curry and Michael Neil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wVxtzFhrRw
An interactive digital media project collaboration
Homage to Rued Langgaard
Mike McInerney - piano
Michael Neil - electronic extensions
Dance : Adam Benjamin, Ruth Way, Song Yunkrung
Music: Michael Neil, Mike McInerney
Lights: Alex White
An interactive digital media project collaboration
with the performance writer Steven Bonfield.
Michael Neil - sound and visuals
Steven Bonfield - text and programming and reading
Transmissions
A Cavernous Silence
The Breath of Exhaling Ghosts - listen
The Landscape of Erasure
Musicians
Suhail Merchant – ‘e’ bowed fretless electric guitar & duct tape.
Michael Neil – Field recordings & found sounds, synthesizers & electroacoustic treatment.
Music existing on the edge of perception: Ephemeral moments in time and space elicit memories and emotions of the disappeared, the erased.
The past is etched with faint traces on a landscape that can represent memories. Like the passing away or erasure of our loved ones, the impetus of their memories live on but gradually become fainter with the passing of time. This concept is represented in the music by the embedding of the original music material and “concrete” sounds - recordings taken from the Dartmoor landscape - and developed from a concert performance. The original recording, having been erased by an act of processing the sound into ever deepening fields of texture, has become a faint shadow of its former self.
Inspired by Dartmoor and the stone circles scattered across its beautiful bleak landscape, every contour and shadow is a refuge for The Breath of Exhaling Ghosts.