Score For A Hole In The Ground
Originally I wrote off Score For a Hole in the Ground as another one of ex-Pogues member Jem Finer’s conspicuous musical stunts, much like his Longplayer and its thousand year composition. Score is in much the same vein. A musical sculpture with a score composed by nature (opposed to the computer of Longplayer), it is based on the Japanese, ceremonial suikinkutsu (literally translated “water harp chamber”) and uses dripping water falling on resonant discs. In order to amplify the sounds Finer created a giant horn, based on the horn of a gramophone. The horn also channels sounds from outside the chamber, such as airplanes and birds, allowing them to meld with the sound of the water droplets.
It’s this that elevated the work for me, I think, specifically the picture above. It’s a ghostly scene, something out of an Edward Gorey illustration or an early Terry Gilliam film, this giant gramophone horn standing menacingly in the fog. It’s in this that Finer’s vision coalesces. Wandering through the forest one hears faint, metallic clangs. Following the sound, slowly becoming louder while remaining just as distant, a towering structure comes into view, emerging from the depths of Kingswood Forest. The real art here is in the discovery.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
That’s all kinds of lovely. I, for one, need such things to unexpectedly pop up in my life. Walking upon this would have me ushering everyone I know to follow the same path.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
I like your writing – thanks for reading my blog!
September 8th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I agree with you that the strange, elongated gramophone horn in the middle of the forest seals the deal here. I’d love to see it rendered more realistically. This is the kind of thing I always hoped I’d find, wandering through the forest as a child.
Actually, this reminds me of one of the earliest CH posts, EVER:
http://coilhouse.net/2007/10/the-great-stalacpipe-organ