BBC2 Horizon

Broadcast on Wednesday April 13th at 8pm on BBC2,  “The End Of The Solar System” is a great looking episode of Horizon for BBC2 that I’ve been working on with established director George Harris.

It’s a meeting of the mundane and the epic as the last days of our solar system are explained via the U.S. town of Peoria, Illinois. The town, renowned for being a boring, everyday town also boasts a scale model of the solar system spread across it. This is musically interesting but also challenging.

Alongside apocalyptic astral happenings we will be hearing some everyday Americana instruments, notably the dobro & weissenborn guitars, as well as my dusty old violin and squeezebox.

I fancied using these instruments to generate some of the cosmic sounds and have been playing with various signal chains. I’ve transposed, time stretched & crystallised; I’ve fed it through delay pedals, spring and digital reverbs – I’ve been amazed at some of the sounds that have come out of these experiments  – steel string guitars become huge organ-like chords, violin bows become ominous sounding moans.

Once I’m clear of the deadlines I’ll upload a video showing some of these processes as maybe you’ll find it interesting ?

Over and out for now, here’s the music only from the same clip :)