Score on special sale, parts for hire

Natural elements, acts of remembering and subtle experiences of perceptual phenomena shape the way I put sounds together.

While completing Januaries my mind kept returning to memories of summers spent as a child with my grandparents in Queensland. Like the sketches of music on my desk, these memories settled in pieces and with some distortions, assembled in a logic closer to that of dreams than waking life. Yet, underpinning these was the precise sensation of elements that seem to share two states at once: of air swollen with water and steaming rain one sweats in. It is this sensation that I worked towards in the final version of the piece.

In a world that seems to prioritise the visual, I’m very interested in the relationship between sounds and sensations (and how much of one’s interior life can be communicated through sound). In considering sensations that elude the eye, I am reminded of a description by Simon Leys (sent to me recently by a friend):“Australian scenery is of inexpressible beauty, it is true, but it is also utterly inconspicuous and non-spectacular—and impossible to capture with a camera: this worn-down immensity, with its half-erased profiles constitutes a magic space entirely devoid of focal point; like ghosts, mirages, and supernatural visions, it escapes the photographer, it does not leave any impression on film.”

Januaries is dedicated to my grandmother in her 100^th year.

Lisa Illean