White Devil

As the sun sets,
and the stars begin to shine,
I hear the sky next to my heart.

Sometimes I think I hear a noise, far off,
but the still night calms.

Background

Written for a 1994 production of John Webster’s “White Devil” (written in 1612) for Moral Support then re-formed at the 50th anniversary of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in 2007.

Process

The final version was created over a continuous period of about 40 hours (with a couple of short naps), using a room-full of NeXT machines running a bunch of custom code and a bunch of old synths (which I played live, not sequenced) and recorded the lot to a 2″ 16-track tape, then live-mixed and mastered onto DAT.

The studio (I ran the studios at Glasgow Uni) was in an oddly shaped room with a stone arch running through part of it. It had four Quad-amp powered 15″ Tannoy Golds in a quadraphonic set-up — a mindblowing sound — which is why the bass on this (and other tracks) is where all the texture is.

The track image was taken in my garden on the Isle of Arran one winter when the snow had fallen and then a crisp couple of clear days froze and transformed into icicles that stood vertically. The Binary Dust copper template perched on top of them, I shone a torch from one side to make the ground sparkle. Then, with a long exposure, I used a flashgun with a blue filter, dozens of times and at various angles to illuminate the garden. The final image hasn’t been touched other than a bit of overall brightness & contrast balancing.

Performances