stirrings

 . . .  for 9 instruments is situated at the opposite, inward-looking end of the poetic spectrum from most of DARK MATTER. In the present version it takes the form of a series of interruptions within a spoken performance of Samuel Beckett's prose piece Sounds. The six sections this time take the form of brief and highly-compressed movements, and could be likened to six views of the same room, in each of which it contains different objects, lit from different angles: not a set of variations but of rearrangements. At the same time they relate more distantly to the abstract dance-suites of baroque music (as The Empire of Lights does to a Renaissance pavan), now abstracted almost but not quite out of existence, as is the «guitaristic tonality» which lies behind them, since stirrings is entirely composed from the «fabric» of transmission.