In their laptops, the bells are stretched, looped and sped up like fire alarms, creating a festive atmosphere that builds a sustained, disorienting crescendo in which the sound of the old bells becomes richer and their multi-tracked layers overwhelming, almost ecstatic.
[Release page] The carillon in the belfry of the Grote of St-Bavokerk in Haarlem has sounded for hundreds of years, originally to signal the closing of the city gates. Nowadays, it plays a sequence known as “De Damiaatjes” each evening between nine and nine-thirty. On Spectral Churches, Coen Oscar Polack, assisted by Herman Wilken and Roald van Dillewijn, extrapolate upon its simple theme. As the mechanical sequence of the bells persists, he plays the cathedral like a great stone calliope, recasting the rather tinny peal in a real time improvisation recorded in front of an audience whose own chatter from the pews is also integrated into the soundscape.
In their laptops, the bells are stretched, looped and sped up like fire alarms, creating a festive atmosphere that builds a sustained, disorienting crescendo in which the sound of the old bells becomes richer and their multi-tracked layers overwhelming, almost ecstatic.
Polack works in long form on a big canvas, having previously reworked an entire alpside (together with Wilken) and a large swath of the Indian subcontinent. His pieces give vastness a texture you can reach out and touch.
Spectral Churches is available on Narrominded. [Release page]
