Andrew Lewis

Miroirs Obscurs collects the work of Andrew Lewis from 1998 to 2007, all realized at least in part at the Electroacoustic Music Studios of Bangor University. Four pieces are portraits of places on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales, each introduced in the booklet by a short prose sketch of the day the recordings were made; the fifth is a large suite on space and movement.

Penmon Point, first prize at CIMESP in São Paulo in 2003, combines three “musics” of the place: the roar of waves dragging huge pebbles and the cracking of frozen pools, the 7th-century hymn Conditor Alme Siderum sung in the tradition of Seiriol’s monastery, and the lighthouse bell, whose 30-second tolling and first eight partials set the structure and pitches of the whole work. Llanddwyn Skies catches dawn at the spring equinox of 2003, with birdsong in Newborough Forest and the jets that are always overhead. Benllech Shells starts from a crowded summer beach and the child’s trick of hearing the sea in a shell, and Cable Bay, dedicated to Francis Dhomont and commissioned by the IMEB in Bourges, won first prize at ART’S XXI in Valencia.

Danses acousmatiques, for eight channels, answers Lewis’s sense that space in acousmatic music is often treated as a mere effect. Its nine movements form three interlocking series, from the atomic to the cosmic: stars and planets, flocking behaviour in nature (a flocking algorithm drives the water sounds of Shoal), and human dance.

Born in Sutton in Ashfield in 1963, Lewis studied at the University of Birmingham, where he completed a doctorate with Jonty Harrison in 1991, and was one of the original members of BEAST. He is Professor of Music at Bangor University and directs Electroacoustic Wales.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0789, 2007.