Because so many of the releases via the touchradio.org.uk website are raw field recordings, it’s difficult to tell with Nacre, its most recent offering, where the performance ends and where the setting begins.
It is a performance, a composed piece for two organs, one played by its composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and the other by Charles Matthews. Nacre is a heavy, maxmimalist drone of a work — a thick undulating cloud of held chords, like some Olivier Messiaen sketch writ extra-large (MP3). The score, viewable below, is in the form of DNA, and Guðnadóttir’s notes at the touchradio.org.uk site go into detail about its structure. Synaesthesia fetishists in particular will be intrigued by the color references in the description.
The version of the track via the iTunes podcast directory (itunes.apple.com) is a 200mb video of the performance, recorded in Riga, Latvia, on May 23, 2009, at St. Saviour’s Anglican Church, as part of an installation by ElÃn Hansdóttir and Hildur Guðnadóttir.
More on Guðnadóttir at hildurness.com. More on Matthews at charlesmatthews.co.uk.