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walkabout VI

by Bradfield Dumpleton

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philomena
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philomena Beginning feels quite ominous…the waves remind me of Tarkovsky’s “Stalker". The high notes seem to “wake” the left side of my brain breaking old circuitry . I love the repetitive footsteps/waves that have been introduced into this album. There is a breathing rhythm, reminding me of Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow”, but not in a defeated way, rather, with the triumph of steadfastness. You sense a light infusing the watery conclusion.
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1.
The Wake 36:41
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Walkabout VI is the sixth in a series of semi-ambient electronic albums created during the Tasmanian covid lockdown in 2020. Each album is developed around realtime recordings of my body moving through space/time along various local bush and beach walks in SE Tasmania. Electronics have been added to create a meditative, dimensional journey.

In the state of virus lockdown, the simple act of walking can take on a different significance. On these recordings, walkabout is describing a sense of ceremony, walking the landscape of the self. Each of these albums takes me deeper into a layer of my psyche and offers reflection on particular themes in my life.

The walk recorded on walkabout VI takes two creative detours from the system of the previous albums. One, the walking is all in water. Two, I have extended the natural realtime length of the walk (15 mins) by duplicating and threading it together to form a full 37 mins. I could have made two distinct tracks, but the watery nature of the theme suggested more of a continuum.

On the previous walkabout (V), my walk ends at a secluded beach of flat sand and shallow water. That same day, I recorded myself wading slowly at ankledepth along the length of this beach and back. The bay was a bowl of stillness, the water barely lapping at the sand. Before recording, I waited for a large bargeboat to pass as it made its way upriver. The Huon River is wide and the big, slow boat was a long way out from the beach. As the presence of the boat dissolved around the point, the air became still again and I commenced recording my waterwalk, but halfway along the beach the first ripples from the boat's wake started to hit the shore, and in a short time they gained intensity and volume, crashing loudly at my feet even though the 'waves' were only a few centimetres high. I was surprised by both the incredible delay and the force of displacement involved for the ripples to travel so far from their source.

The piece of music on this album expresses a gentle walk into Death, in the sense of Passing...how a Life passes through the fluid field of time, what ripples are left when the Body, the Being, dissolves - 'The Wake' is a meditation on how the ripples form and spread beyond the source, contacting other surfaces, other lives, then folding back on themselves to melt into the vaster space. In the second half there is an imagining of the lifeforce leaving the body, swirling wingbeats, angels and the dreamlike distortions of a fading consciousness, the Sirens beckoning, the Lynchian bardo orchestra....and perhaps a resolution into.......?

Almost all the music on the walkabout albums has been played on the qwerty keyboard of my laptop, with sounds generated using Spitfire Lab's Soft Piano & the amazing Surge synth plug-in.

Rhythms of life, forward motion.
A psychogenic Bark Fugue.
Walk the (black) Dog, and reach for the Star.
(Siriusly.....)

credits

released May 15, 2020

Walked, imagined, improvised & recorded by BD, at Nicholls Rivulet, SE Tasmania, Apr 2020. Music & Art © 2020 Bradfield Dumpleton.
BD plays: Feets, electronics.

More info: bradfielddumpleton.com/walkabout-i-vii-2020-motion-in-lockdown/

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Bradfield Dumpleton TAS, Australia

A library of musical sketchbooks, mapping my various evolutions from 2005 to next week. Dedicated to exploring sound for its own sake. Many diverse delights here for the patient & attentive listener.

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