Subterranean London MP3

Tunnel Vision is the name of a new podcast via Resonance FM. It’s a 10-part series in which various musicians, writers, and other individuals wander the Victorian-era space below London, as initiated by producer Bruno Rinvolucri. The first spelunker in Tunnel Vision is Sammie Joplin, who takes his electric guitar, bow, and portable amplifier into the deep between Brixton Water Lane and Clapham High Street (MP3). The audio track presents Joplin recounting what it’s like under London, discussing with Rinvolucri and another producer. The sound is expectedly dank and reverberant, and around the 10-minute mark, Joplin begins his performance, an echo-laden tone-field, in which scraping suggests the presence of vermin, and long held notes summon up the dark depths — and that’s just the beginning. The work gets percussive and chaotic as he proceeds, making the most of that rancid and historic corridor. As Rinvolucri mentions at the track’s opening, the trio happened to surface in the midst of a crime scene. Says a policeman who greets them, “You’re lucky you didn’t come out with a lot more of us standing around you, thinking you were up to something else.”