Pierced heart

"Working with a field recording of an air show has been deeply gratifying. On an emotional level, it has allowed for something like sublimation or integration. Having attended the 1988 Flugtag air show in Germany (in which 70 people were killed and hundreds wounded), I still tend to experience visceral reactions to the sound of fighter jets or aerobatics. Creating something of my own out of this field recording has ended up being a form of emotional processing as well.

"On a technical level, the original recording proved to be highly malleable source material, and it is the sole sound source I used in my track. As the sound of jets is effectively rhythmic noise (and thus full of frequencies), I decided to slow it down drastically, reverse and granulate a brief segment, and then pitch shift that result into additional notes to form a chord. I then pulsed various strains of that chord with looping envelopes and ran them through spatial and time-based effects that morph ever so slightly over the duration of the track. The result, I hope, is something of a meditative repetition that rewards close attention."

Red Arrows display in Southport reimagined by Jerome Veith.