Darling Scarp (2024)

fixed media; Buchla 100 and field recordings

dedicated to Golnaz Shariatzadeh

Listening to the recording yesterday before release, a year after the premiere, I hear a Boston dream of the early pandemic which I spent locked down in Western Australia -- those feelings of awe, anger, renewal, and nature-derived-joy blended with memories of exploring my Grandmothers garden as a kid, all on the Darling Scarp.

original program note

There is a thread of reverence through this work, or nostalgia –– months spent discovering the Buchla 100 in Boston’s winter haze, I could easily daydream about long past summers in Australia, holidays spent far from home in Kalamunda, further south along the darling scarp, navigating my grandmother’s garden.  

Her garden was interwoven from thick, native bush by a network of narrow dirt paths. With a high sun, paths urged you gently gird by clusters of native flowers, her fruits, and aromatics; a changing collection of assembled scraps and overgrown objects hidden and exhibited throughout. As a child, focused on the gnomes, flowers, and fruits, you’d hardly notice the ache and gaze of the eucalypts.

Synthesized sounds come from the Buchla 100 and deep low end from a Korg BX3 — field recordings come from the Darling Scarp.

—

This piece loosely follows the sequence of a day.

• 0:00-4:25, pre-dawn sky glow,

• 4:26-6:46, morning breeze,

• 6:46-8:40, sun splintering and earth stretching

• 8:41-10:51, rays break through / bird chorus (magpie),

• 10:52-13:55, cold air and stars from light blue,

• 13:56-15:46, stillness rises (kookaburra),

• 15:47-17:23,

• 17:24-19:26, bush ritual

recording