Postcard from Paris (2000) 2'36
Postcard from Paris captures an outsider's day trip to Paris, summarising a brief exploration of a few characteristic sites of interest.'Having a great time. Wish you were here!'
"Murphy's Postcard from Paris was recognisable and accessible despite the clever way in which its soundworld has been manipulated, featuring such known quantities as snatches of conversation, a piano bar ambience, and voices singing in church worship."
Glasgow Herald - Friday 5th May 2000
Postcard from Paris (2000) marks a transition
away from earlier works Serpentina (1997) and Integration/Disintegration
(1997)
by including field recordings of sources outside the studio-recording
environment. Up to this point my compositions concentrated on the combination
of single characteristic sounds and their transitions; namely the female
voice in Serpentina and violin sounds in Integration/Disintegration.
Although highly successful because of the fact that Serpentina presented
a varied and well crafted sound-world and sound-space entirely from source
recordings of the female voice, the structural considerations of ‘sonic
postcards’ enabled me to explore and concentrate on the transitions
themselves, using a more characteristically diverse ‘palette’ of
sounds.
An
outsider’s trip to Paris is immediately recognisable and accessible,
despite the way in which its sound world has been manipulated. It features
such known quantities as snatches of conversation, a piano bar ambience,
and voices singing in church worship ‘framed’ by transitions
that are more abstract and ‘electronic’ in nature. The
quirky, pulsed opening, sets the pace of the piece whilst suggesting
the notion
of travel, (perhaps even time travel – which is referred to at
1’13 with a recording of a voice in an interactive installation
at La Geode). Out of the slightly disorientating whirlwind opening,
the first transition leads the listener briefly into a church and then
into
an outdoor space, in a relatively short space of time. This immediately
establishes the pace, place and notion of ‘snapshots’ sustainable
only in a ‘miniature’ structure, achieved by a ‘framing’ convention.
In the first instance this is a sustained drone starting with an indefinite
or hidden identity transforming into a sustained organ chord and transforming
back into the unidentified more electronic drone. The ear is further
guided by a glimpse of a church-like reverberation slightly before
the establishment of the church space, subsequently referred to with
a giggle ‘this
is Sacré Coeur’ and the recognisable click of a lighter,
albeit presented out of context of both spaces. The transitions composed
with the varied, non-single-characteristic source material introduce
a slightly comical and fleeting feel previously not explored in my
music, which reappears in my latest piece Sound Shadows (2003).