Circadial
ghost music
Created and performed by Tanuja Amarasuriya & Timothy X Atack
Circadial is a place-specific, live, improvised sound gig. The sounds of this town's streets, wildlife, nightlife, vehicles, venues, homes, musicians and offices are looped, sieved, filtered, warped and stretched to make new, beautiful and perturbing music.
Circadial is about the rhythms and polyphony of a place; the way that sound can locate you in time and geography. We make local field recordings over the days and nights preceding the performances, from which we create a live, improvised, constantly shifting music. We think of it as finding the ghost music underneath the traffic noise, street bustle, police helicopters, and birdsong.
"We completely blissed out last night absorbing the gorgeous sounds of @sleepdogs @BristolFerment - beautiful sonic soundscaping stuff"
Audience response
"Thumping arrhythmia, streetsongs, and the noise of #sanctumbristol being built: @sleepdogs made city sound uncanny & wonderful."
Audience response
We've used these techniques of manipulating field recordings as the basis of composition in a lot of our theatre work, but this is first project where we're putting the process at the centre of the performance.
Each version of Circadial is unique and created specially for each location we play.
We originally made Circadial for Theaster Gates' Sanctum, at Bristol's Temple Church in 2015. Here's a little film that the nice people at Canvas made about what we did:
Credits:
Created & Performed by Timothy X Atack & Tanuja Amarasuriya. Produced by MAYK. Photography by Jack Offord (Bristol) and James Bellorini (London). Created for Theaster Gates' Sanctum, a Bristol 2015 European Green Capital Project produced by Situations. Developed with support from Bristol Old Vic Ferment.
Previous gigs:
Circadial (Bristol) 1-4: Sanctum at Bristol Temple Church
Circadial (Bristol) 5: Bristol Old Vic, as part of Ferment
Circadial (Bristol) 6: The Station, as part of Mayfest
Circadial (Bristol) 7: The Wardrobe Theatre, as part of Mayfest
Circadial (Bristol Old Vic Studio RIP remix): Bristol Old Vic Studio
Circadial (London): National Theatre Riverstage
Circadial (Exeter): The Cavern, as part of the Lost Weekend Festival
Here's some photos from Circadial (London) on the National Theatre Riverstage:
