In the dreams of a wind turbine
On the way home from Christmas, I drove past one of the UK’s biggest inland wind farms around Daventry, right in the heart of the country and right next to the major M1 motorway. I’d already recorded a solitary wind turbine in Cornwall earlier in the year, but the chance to record in amongst a group of turbines was too much to resist. A quarter-mile walk and a quick hop over a barbed wire fence later and I was at the foot of one of these mighty machines.
It’s hard to describe the combination of sound and sight at the base of a turbine this size, blades swooping down in colossal arcs, while the machinery inside the column whirrs and clanks, but it’s pretty awe-inspiring. The field recording is taken from the heart of the turbine, with the regular three-blade swish carving out a regular pattern over the thrum of the machinery. Listen out, though – once every three or four minutes something stirs within the turbine shaft, and the sound like an underwater whale call blares out impressively.
For the reimagined version, I’ve tried to create the sound of what it was like when I dreamed about the experience that night – a half-remembered snatch of the scene augmented by new colours and shapes from my imagination. A dream put into sound, as closely as I could.
City version:
Memory version:
