Composition inspired by Church of St John the Baptist, Bristol

21 Sep 2011

This 25 minute work explores the various aspects of Jebanasam's unique aural vision by drowning an ancient sacred space in walls of fused textural sound and traditional instrumentation, creating a world that is at once both brutal and fragile.

Employing a diverse assemblage of instruments from the baroque viol to guitar amplifiers to custom convolution and granular programs, he conjures up a haunting landscape of some unknown geology - a vast terrain where cavernous drones and deadly winds threaten the delicate ceremonial purpose of the music's mechanised rituals.

Dense layers of treated guitars and sculpted noise coalesce as if driven by some inexorable natural process only to be reduced down to the sound of a solitary semantron before a primordial raga for viola calls out the piece's elegiac coda for strings.

As a brief introductory glimpse into the work of this outlying composer, 'Music for the Church of St John the Baptist' reveals with a gradual intensity, a brooding force concerned as much with primitive liturgical structures as it is with the infinitely complex networks of digital signal processing.

Listen to this wonderful music

Find out more about the Church of St John the Baptist, Bristol