available here:

everycontactleavesatrace.bandcamp.com/album/twelve-tapes

Twelve C60 cassette tapes, each containing thirty minute stereo field recordings of a sine wave (B: 493.88hz) played back into enclosed, multi-storey or underground car parks. In performance, these tapes may be played in any combination or configuration, for any duration, alongside any number of musicians using any instrumentation.

ASSEMBLY OF MATERIALS
The locations chosen for recording should be enclosed, multi-storey or underground car parks.

Recordings should be in stereo and last exactly thirty minutes, of which twenty minutes – any twenty minutes, subdivided as the recordist sees fit – should feature the sine wave.

Play the sine wave – B: 493.88hz – into the environment using a method that reproduces the recorded frequency accurately and without distortion, either of pitch or timbre (i.e. digital mp3 encoded at 256kbps).

The amplitude of the sine wave should be matched to the general level of ambient sound in the environment. It should be treated as a sound in the space, played back from a static source and recorded with static equipment, without close mics or direct input.

The piece requires either twelve or twenty-four such recordings (one or two per cassette).

PERFORMANCE

The tapes may be played in any combination or configuration, for any duration, alongside any number of musicians using any instrumentation.

One focus of the piece is the variance in pitch and fidelity caused by imperfections in the playback mechanisms of different cassette recorders, and the results of that effect when the same pitch is played back by multiple cassette recorders simultaneously. Performances should emphasise this creation of difference out of identical tones, alongside the layering of the categorically identical but materially different sounds from the car park environments.

Performers should tune their instruments to the same recording of the sine wave used in constructing the field recordings.

Performers should be directed by the tapes, matching their dynamics and amplitude to the recordings, aiming for their contribution to vary between indistinguishable and partially distinguishable from the pre-recorded material.

The tapes themselves, and/or their means of playback, may also be treated as instruments, or as part of an instrument.
credits
released November 2, 2016

Composed by Bang the Bore, January 2012 – January 2014

Recordings by Seth Cooke, Robbie Judkins, Declan Kelly, Keith de Mendonca and Andrew Page, January – June 2014

Instantiated by Bang the Bore, Bay Area & Cantonments, May 2016