A Hypnagogic Liminal Meditation on the Olfactory Iridescences of the Dawn Chorus (Summer Solstice 1979)

by Hermione Harvestman

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	1.	A Hypnagogic Liminal Meditation on the Olfactory Iridescences of the Dawn Chorus - Part One 26:43		buy track
	2.	A Hypnagogic Liminal Meditation on the Olfactory Iridescences of the Dawn Chorus - Part Two 30:26		buy track

about

'A Hypnagogic Liminal Meditation on the Olfactory Iridescences of the Dawn Chorus' was recorded at dawn on the Summer Solstice of Thursday June 21st 1979 in one unbroken sequence of almost an hour's duration*. The idea was a simple one - to set up several microphones in the woodland outside so as to catch the dawn chorus and relay the sound live into the studio where I would improvise without preconception in response to the dreamy cacophony of bird song.

I say 'dreamy' because it was around four in the morning. I had my makeshift 'studio' was set up in the ivy-clad Edwardian conservatory of my friend's remote woodland home on the Norfolk / Suffolk border. It had been my intention to stay up all night but in the event fatigue got the better of me, though it was hardly improved by my having to rise at such an ungodly hour. In such a hypnagogic state the music assumed a liminal lucidness in which it took on a life of its own, crossing over (I swear) into realms of pure synaesthesia, hence the notion of Olfactory Iridescence.

Happily, I'd attended to technical side of things before retiring, so all I had to do was get up, switch on, play the music then go back to bed where I slept until noon. Later, listening back to to the music with my friend at midnight, the feeling was that the whole business had been a dream. I normally aspire to a certain creative detachment from my work, but in this case the detachment was complete, as for several hours I had no recollection of any of it. Happily, the musical signatures were very recognisably ME - at least my creative self with whom I am barely acquainted and who might function quite efficiently even though the rest of me is, for all intents and purposes, fast asleep. So none of it was too surprising (though the keen eared might spot one edit) nor yet disturbing, or let implicit of more formidable musical visitants that might lurk in the hinterlands of hypnagogic reality looking for a point of entry. These would be the subjective ghosts that I never saw anyway, for their femmer presences ill befit the reality of objective empirical nature at its most profound and which this music is but one attempt at communion.

But as my friend said : 'Say something often enough, Hermione - and one day you might end up believing it yourself.'

Hermione Harvestman, June 2004.

* Here split into two because of the size of the file. If anyone requires the complete unbroken sequence email me at sean@sedayne.co.uk and it can be supplied on a high quality Yuden CD-R for £7, inclusive of P&P.

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released June 21, 2014

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Hermione Harvestman UK

'I feel like Wainwright - we are both hermetic ramblers. He made his books for when he was no longer capable of rambling his beloved fells, and I made my music for when I'm no longer able to ramble the by-ways of Albion - but only to listen, and think "Was that really me? That solitary figure who stood in a landscape dreaming of ages past in dread fear of the future."

Hermione Harvestman ... more

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