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Daily Ambience

“Space Exploration”, the new release from Cinema Volta, is a collection of recordings that spring from my fascination with acoustic resonance – reverberation, delay, echo, and harmonic reinforcement.

This album consists of improvisations made in response to the acoustic qualities of four churches - Chartres and Rouen in France and Domkyrkan and Laukyrkan in Sweden. In essence, these are duets, with the space itself as the second
player.

There is a third player in these pieces as well – the computer. The spaces used in these recordings exist within a computer. Through the use of a process called  ‘convolving,’ a live acoustic space can be sampled and reproduced within a computer. Convolution has been around for a while, but computers have only just become fast  enough to do it in real time. Real time processing was key to these performances, since what I played was in direct response to what the space was sending back to me.


These pieces are just the beginning of what I expect to be a long collaboration between music and space.

John Maxwell Hobbs
Stockholm
March 2, 2004