Ephemerists

"I have moved countries twice, and ended in the UK. This it was what drew me to the recording I chose. I wondered what someone else might have chosen to record, and how it would compare to what I record.

"When I listened to the conversation around the dinner table, I recognised it as a conversation in which I have been present many, many times, with people from several different countries around the table, all talking about staying.

"Most have stayed. Some have gone back, or sideways. The stories, the bureaucratic hurdles, the advice, the disappointments, the otherness - those might disappear at the end of the night, only to be repeated the next day by someone else thinking of staying.

"I started by listening to the original recording, and marking up timestamps that I felt could be important or useful for the composition. I then chopped up those sections and created a sample pack which I loaded onto a few machines. I recorded some piano and vibraphone loops, and loaded them onto the machines.

"The original recordings were processed by a spectral plugin, and further cut up into very thin slices, to be used as synth voices. Some of the samples make
an appearance almost intact.

"When I was happy with the arrangement, I recorded a few performances directly to tape, and then did some light mastering on the final one."

Oxford migration conversation reimagined by Stray wool.

Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration. 

For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration