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EQUINOX (1975)

by Hermione Harvestman

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Matt Tantony
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Marc Smith
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1.
Part One : Equinox Night 18:51
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2.
Part Two : Equinox Day 19:04
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about

This sequence was recorded 'live' (albeit via DI) around midnight on the night of Friday March 21st 1975. It was improvised in real time for a piece of performance art entitled Equinox, in which the Flammarion engraving was dimly projected onto an otherwise unlit stage onto which several dancers cavorted in fleshings before a small & mostly bewildered audience, several of whom were no doubt expecting real nudity which at least two of the young dancers in their excitement (Roberta and Gordon who organised the 'event', second names long forgotten, or not known in the first place) duly gave them, though the projection was so dim and the air so heavy with dry ice I doubt it was noticeable to anyone but me, perched as I was at the rear of the stage, reluctant to follow the directions that the Night Music ought to be darkly abstract, whilst the Day Music should have hints of melody and rhythm '...like Tangerine Dream...'. To this end I avoided using the sequencer for anything but a drone, and tried to sound as unlike Tangerine Dream (of whom I was especially fond around that time) as was humanly possible.

The Flammarion Engraving has become such a cliché but I've always loved it, especially in respect of this music which evolved in spite of the programmatical restrictions imposed upon it. I followed the notion of distinct two sections, each of around 19 minutes duration, but the music came to live and breathe in such a way that it seemed right to just let it grow in its own ritual space. For the second half - the 'Day' section - the Flammarion Engraving had faded to that of Sunrise at Stonehenge - another cliché that seemed utterly apt, though I was less certain of the ritual function of the monument, much less of the human silences it represented, which why, I dare say, the music came out as it did. In my time I've experienced some quite terrifying equinoctial sunrises at prehistoric sites, at least one of which was at Stonehenge where latter-day impositions did little to dissuade my darker notions of what was actually afoot. Thus the music becomes a prism in which to refract such notions; a droning darkness that persists despite, or even because of, the light.

Hermione Harvestman, March 2004.

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released March 18, 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."

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