Michael McKinney speaks to the British electronic artist about the beauty of shutting up to record sounds, creating music as a response to crisis, turning a horse skeleton into a pile of instruments and more.
But there's other parts that I think are really fascinating. I worked with Dr. Rupert Till, an archeoacoustician from the University of Huddersfield. He recorded in the caves in Spain, in front of these horse drawings. I'd visited there and tried to secretly record on my phone, but he'd gotten permission. He went in there and got proper impulse responses to map the sounds. So I took my horse-skin drum: I can play it in my studio, and, using Rupert's mappings, I can simulate what it would have sounded like to be in this cave in front of this particular horse drawing.
...That track had such a strong impact on me. I said, "Maybe, the reason why this drawing is here"—Rupert and other people are doing research about this—"Maybe there's a correlation between where the paintings are and resonant chambers, or resonant frequencies within the cave structures."