Ishijima, Akemi
Time Drops
This mini CD follows on from her previous electroacoustic composition on 'Variations 2 - a London compilation' Paradigm Discs (PD 05). It includes one new piece and a reissue of 'Ab Ovo', previously released on '5 composers second coming' Fylkingen (FYCD 1003). The 2 pieces explore a broad range of traditional electronic techniques, both subtle and powerful. Time Drops (2000). A single stroke of a bell, in its decay, sometimes evokes a sense of infinity in our mind. Time Drops is an attempt to express such ideas as infinity, cosmic equilibrium, and moments of creation in the form of electroacoustic music. Like rain drops making rings in water, the sound generates rings of oscillation, which create parallel universes and coexisting ones. As each sound appears and disappears, the perpetual process of creation and decline in the cosmic equilibrium is experienced in the presence and non-presence of multiple resonance. A mystery still remains around the question of how it all began.Time Drops creates a poetic correspondence with cosmic harmony. Ab Ovo (1993). I once saw, in a science film, a pendulum placed in a peculiar type of magnetic field. It kept swinging in different directions for a while until it stoped at a non-perpendicular position. I was fascinated. I started imagining and creating electroacoustic sketches associated with this image, for example a tiny air vibration caused by the passage of a pendulum etc. Reflection upon two major aspects of the motion of the pendulum - periodicity, and the effect of interfering force - brought in another sound source eg. an egg. When I heard the amplified sound of an egg breaking in the studio, the composition magically came together. The piece starts with a rather striking impact of breaking an egg. This initiates the whole journey through the imaginary sound world circling around eternity and the inevitable point of disruption in a figure of eight. Composed at the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the University of East Anglia, England, 1993.