*20 copies limited edition* The name 'Light Sensitive Materials' comes from a photochemical company in the former USSR, “SVEMA”, an abbreviation for Svetochuvstvitelnye materialy: light-sensitive materials in Russian. The first 8mm I shot was an expired film from the SVEMA factory in what is now Ukraine (Shostka Reel, 2022). The audio is created by making sonifications of film reels I have shot, taking the luminance, the light and dark, and creating sound from them. Parameters like tone, pitch etc can be adjusted. I call it the "Celluloid Synthesiser". A lot of the sounds come from the holes punched at the end of the reels; the black at the edge of the frames; scratches and dust. I mix that with field recordings on tape and samples from the USC optical sound effects library, samples that sound designers used to carry around on tape and share, degraded with each recording. Optical sound is also light waves to audio. Sound dredged from the cracked terrain of the film surface. 

Ultimately this was made in the foggy midst of a collapse of a 10 year relationship, in a wider context of horror, with a deadline that forced me to not think very much at all. Looking back I have no idea what the intentions were or sometimes the exact sources of each sound. I was in limbo, more than a little intoxicated, and just followed my instinct until I liked what came out. I don’t know if I would have broken through the imposter syndrome any other way. I am not certain of what I am doing but I know what I like, or at least what was needed at that time. Listening back is very mysterious, a very oblique look at a period where I was unhinged, off-kilter and probably in a lot of pain. My mind has blocked that out for now like so many decayed reels. Fog, disintegration, decay: erasure is a protection sometimes as well as a loss. Material, personal, global. This feels like something I have unearthed rather than made. The last reveries of dying worlds.