Coppice – Pied

Since late 2009 we have developed compositions using a modified boombox – a tape loop machine that records and plays back simultaneously. Sounds that enter it are released within seconds, sounding gentle feedback. Our first compositions using this boombox and a shruti box marked the beginnings of our collaboration as Coppice, and a phase of up-close entwinement of both instruments in decidedly quiet gestures. Since then, we have expanded our dynamic palette and range of instrumentation to include more bellowed instruments, custom instruments and other electronic processes.

Last Fall, we began imagining what has become Pied, a composition for tape, pump organ and the boombox. Its form contrasts the tapes’ fibrous processing with the more tabular appearances of microtonal pump organ transpositions – performed quietly but loudly amplified to bring out interferences and resonances by means of the original microphone techniques.

On one hand, Pied is a stark display of our sounds as solo artists, but in a borderline duet: five pump organ sections (recorded in Summer 2011 at Fljótstunga, Iceland) alternating with their boombox mediation and trails.