Whitechapel's dark past

Reimagined by Matthew Williams.

"This piece was inspired by Whitechapel's famous but dark past. I didn't want to just do a, 'Jack the Ripper' composition as the exhibition is to celebrate the underground , but wanted to give it a dark, almost dream like feel.

It's quite a subtle composition (in places), more of a soundscape and relies on the dynamic range of the sounds to create the feelings and emotions. In my mind, the piece starts off at the present, inside the ticket hall of Whitechapel Station. The piece slowly starts to drift in and out of consciousness, gradually going back to Whitechapel's dark history. Towards the end, we start heading back to modern day, ending back in the ticket office....and a twist.

Almost all of the sounds and drones used were made from recordings of the area which were then manipulated into other things such as drones and pads. As well as the supplied recording, there are pieces made up from ambiences in the famous Ten Bells pub, some from the underground, and the 'bang' sounds are from stamping on a grid in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation