DISPATCHES 004: THE SOUNDTRACK HAS ESCAPED

DISPATCHES 004 | 11:11 | 9.18.26

Excitement, it turns out, is not the opposite of exhaustion. Sometimes it is simply exhaustion with ideas. The studio is currently full of both. So this week’s Dispatch will be brief.

WHEN THE SOUNDTRACK BECOMES MATERIAL

For every project I can remember, a soundtrack has developed, but it usually remains separate from the work.

For Strange Companions, that boundary collapsed.

Sound is being developed alongside the sculpture, installation, writing and performance. It is not atmosphere applied after the fact. It has the same status as the sculpted plinths, asemic markings or anything else being shaped into the project.

Listening to musique concrète has blurred the boundary between sound and music for us. A contact mic can expose vibrations travelling through a tabletop, the body of a vessel or the walls of the studio: sounds that ordinarily register as movement rather than music.

The process feels similar to making visual work: collect material from the world, isolate it, alter its context and place it in conversation with things it was never intended to meet.

The humbling part is moving from choosing the soundtrack to helping construct it. Decades of extremely specific musical opinions offer surprisingly little practical assistance once someone puts an instrument in front of you.

So, the current method is to record, sample, listen and respond.

Dawless and lawless.

Perhaps that is why this phase feels equally exhausting and exciting. Every new material opens another part of the project, and sound has proven particularly unwilling to remain in its assigned lane.

The soundtrack is no longer sitting beside the work.

It has entered the system.

THREE SOUNDS CURRENTLY UNDER INVESTIGATION

PORCELAIN
Struck, scraped and moved across other surfaces. Much less delicate than appearances suggest.

RAIN
Recorded in Kyoto before sunrise, while the city was still deciding whether to wake.

TRAINS
Recorded on platforms, in stairwells and beneath the tracks in Tokyo.

THREE ENTRY POINTS INTO MUSIQUE CONCRÈTE

Pierre Schaeffer, Étude aux chemins de fer
A foundational work built from recorded trains.

Amon Tobin, Foley Room
Field recordings and Foley sounds reorganized into something dark and cinematic.

Matmos, Ultimate Care II
An entire album constructed from the sounds of a washing machine,

KEEP THE EVENING OPEN

STRANGE COMPANIONS CLOSING RECEPTION

Friday, October 23, 2026, 6 PM - 9 PM
Sparrow Artspace, Bridgeland, Calgary

By then, the residency will have accumulated sculpture, soundscape, an oracle deck and a field guide containing no definitive guidance whatsoever.

Full details will follow.
Burn bright, crash spectacularly,

Bramble