Mathew Adkins

Mondes Inconnus collects eight works by Monty Adkins composed between 1994 and 2005, in the studios of the University of Birmingham and the University of East Anglia, at the Ina-GRM in Paris, at the IMEB in Bourges and in his own studio. The 93 minutes of music are presented in stereo at 96 kHz and 24 bits. Unknown worlds recur throughout: imagined landscapes, deep space, cyberspace.

Melt (1994), the earliest piece, grew out of his daily train rides to the Birmingham studio and draws on Turner’s Rain, Steam, and Speed, with a nod to Schaeffer’s Étude aux chemins de fer: recordings of trains and station announcements melt into a dream world. It won 1st prize at the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award in 1995. Mapping plays with the idea of starting out, through quotations from early Schaeffer and children learning a game or to ride a bike. Aerial and Deepfield form a pair: the first a sonic photograph of the hills of northern England, the second a commission from the Planétarium de Reims that follows Hubble images towards quasars, built from rocks and gas cylinders. Still Time, for flutist Alejandro Escuer and processing, moves between stasis and speed into quarter tones. Symbiont sets acousmatic writing against drum ’n’ bass, with hidden quotations from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and ideas from William Gibson and HR Giger. Silk to Steel is a 50th birthday present for Christopher Fox, built around his piano work Prime Site, and Cortex follows a “cyber-innocent” voice slowly corrupted by digital debris.

Born in Leamington in 1972, Adkins read music at Pembroke College, Cambridge, then studied electronic music with Jonty Harrison in Birmingham, performing with BEAST, and with Simon Waters at East Anglia. He is professor of experimental electronic music at the University of Huddersfield.

DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 0679, 2006.