Recording: Contact Contemporary Music

Artist: Contact Contemporary Music

Song: Beneath a Landscape [excerpt] [composer: Jason Doell]

Recorded at Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station (Intersection Day 1: Music For Subways), August 29, 2019.

Contact Contemporary Music - Beneath a Landscape [excerpt]

A couple years back, Intersection made its first step into presenting creative sounds in unconventional environments. This sequel moved from the core to the end of the line, exchanging a jam-packed greenhouse for plenty elbow room in the city's newest subway stations. At that literal end-of-the-line, the musicians of Contact (along with some of the night's earlier performers joining in) formed into a rough circle to begin an unhurried drone before some of them (especially those with melodicas) started to freely wander around the space.

As is often the case, composer Jason Doell attempted to downplay the notion that he actually did much composing, but there were some savvy music ideas here nonetheless. At the piece's start, one could see the musicians playing but could scarcely hear anything, as Doell had spent some time at the station, recording and analyzing its ambient hum, and then starting the musicians in that same zone. Slowly, the highs of the strings, followed by the other instruments, began to cut through the background hum as the soundfield evolved, seeping fog-like into the curved corners of the station's alien spaceship contours.