Our journey into Dante’s Inferno continues, and today we’re suspended in Limbo, with four pieces from this liminal space in Hell, the first of which comes from Warren Daly.

“My composition tries to capture the varied emotions of being ensnared in limbo.

“I used field recordings from a tropical forest in order to mirror Dante’s journey. The juxtaposition of chords and polyrhythms is striking, immersing the listener in layered organic synthesis reflecting the tantalizing proximity yet rejection from utopia.”

Our second slice of Limbo was created by Eva Q. Mansson, who writes:

““My youthful hopes are in the Limbo of lost dreams”

I am the snail
In a bubble of nothing
Dreaming
I am here, yet am not
I am a meat grinder. Grinding myself
Surviving. Dying. Leaving without a trace
Going nowhere. Being everywhere
Believing nothing. Knowing even less
I am the snail, yet am not

(Thoughts during the hell of worldwide current events)”

– Field recording of walking on a cobblestone field by the Baltic Sea
– Analog noise created with Blind Noise and Radio Sputnik
– Melody sequence created on Bliptronic 5000
– Beats made with Korg Kaossilator
– Effects through Korg NTS-1
– Sound clips from the movie “Apocalypse Now

Next up is Andy Skelton, whose piece came about like this:

“Dante’s Limbo contains those souls trapped between two states – neither of sufficient faith for paradise, nor sinful enough for hell. I started thinking about this, and our commonly understood meaning of limbo (ie held in suspension between two possible outcomes).

“Taking inspiration from this, I improvised a piece on shortwave radio receivers. I was careful to record signals that exist between stations, never quite arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. Furthermore, the signals, at times, produced a note that could be microtonally shifted.

“This means that the notes themselves are held in a kind of limbo, filling the space between notes and never fully resolving. The listener should listen out for this. Other than filtering out a degree of excess noise, this submission is exactly as performed and recorded.”

Finally, we finish our visit to Limbo with Philippe Neau, who writes:

“I worked with my voice and the sounds of water and air. My track tries to evoke the expectation of souls in the afterlife, in an intermediate and fuzzy place.”