Today we’re heading inland, and we close in on the main city of Utopia, Amaurotos – as imagined by two UK sound artists here.

Amaurotos – Andy Lyon, Lincolnshire, UK

“The piece is titled ‘Amaurotos’ and is the imagining of a Utopian city.

There’s an element of the changing sounds you tend to hear as you move through a city.

Some field recordings from a park have been used in the piece and the percussive rhythm was also created using recorded sounds.

I was also intrigued by the alternative interpretation of Utopia as ‘nowhere’ and the Greek meaning of Amaurotus as shadowy or unknown so another element to the piece was trying to weave some of these themes and some tension / dissonance into the piece too.

I used Cataract to create the percussive rhythm; Polygon to incorporate and modulate the field recordings; Poly 2106 for the strings; Aalto CM for bass effects and some sound effects; Nave for a bass sound and Dune CM for the lead sound plus various delays and reverbs.”

 

Photoelectric Utopia – Drew Mulholland, Glasgow, UK

“My musical interpretation of square C2 began with the transferring of the image onto a virtual Soviet era Russian synth called The ANS where you draw onto transparent panels which in turn are read by photo electric cells in the machine and transposed into sound.

The elements that were produced were fairly short so out of about ten small sections I built the track.”