Adrian Moore

Traces collects five works that Adrian Moore composed between 1994 and 1997, four of them in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham. He sorts them into three groups: pieces verging on the abstract (Junky, Dreamarena), pieces that re-hear natural sound objects (Study in Ink, Foil-Counterfoil) and a “radiogenic” work (Sieve). What links them, in his words, is a search for the hidden, inside the piece and inside the sound, and the idea of a trace as what is left behind, like a brass rubbing of a memorial plate.

Junky, which he calls “electroacoustic ambient”, quickly turns its few recognisable sources into pitch and rhythm and follows a clear A, B, A+B form with a coda; it received a mention at Musica Nova 1996. Dreamarena returns to more abstract material, shaped continuously by gesture. Study in Ink has a single source, a marker pen drying out on a whiteboard, whose squeaks move from airy whispers to grating, with descending gestures that sound like sighs and quick rising ones like questions; it took a second prize ex æquo at EAR’97 in Budapest.

Foil-Counterfoil records tin foil at very close range and sets it against glasses, bottles and balloons, and received a mention at Prix Ars Electronica 1998. Sieve was realized in 1994 in Elizabeth Parker’s studio at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, funded by the Barry Anderson Trust and premiered on BBC Radio 3; it moves from a living room to a town square through a carriage clock turning into a church bell, and won second prize at the Noroit-Léonce Petitot prize in 1995.

Born in Nottingham in 1969, Adrian Moore discovered electroacoustic music at a concert by Denis Smalley, studied at City University in London and then with Jonty Harrison in Birmingham, composing for BEAST. He directs the University of Sheffield Sound Studios.

CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0053, 2000.