Newtoy

WET SOUNDS MONTREAL

23rd oct 2016

OSLO

3RD NOV 2016

WETSOUNDS.CO.UK

REVIEWS

'Cahen's dream traveller stimulates my imagination, directing me to details I would have missed, pasting eerie parallel dream worlds onto a cold, grey weekend morning in suburbia'

- THE WIRE 384 / Jan 2016

'Joel Cahen's magic realist The Oneironaut in the most immersive app... with details from the park acting as narrative triggers. Dedications on benches become the mantras of an unseen ritualistic gathering. Large circular flowerbeds become burial sites where sound is looped and layered. Crashes and clatters combine with eerie female voices, a dense hum and fragments of a drunk male voice singing a shanty of sorts. I feel I've disturbed some spirits which quieten as I step back onto the path.

- THE WIRE 384 / Jan 2016

Teffradot opera walk 2015

“A great success of the piece is the way traditional folklore has been cleverly implemented with a modernised approach to sonic art. Each opus is carefully constructed with sonorous instrumentation and narrative delivery. There is a playful mood to the unfolding events, yet the ever-present emotive content gives poise to connecting warmly with the characters. The language, whilst delivered in coded and poetic abstract fashion, weaves mellifluously through a compelling avenue of storytelling.”

- SAIN SOUND

INTERZONE THEATRE

GEO-LOCATIVE APP FOR NARRATIVE SOUND ART

THE ONEIRONAUT

We spend 11% of our existence dreaming, a full month of each year, that's more time than we spend eating. While the body lies still the mind wanders, free of limitations of time and space. This story poses the possibility that a conscious dreaming mind could share other people's real waking experiences.

The Oneironaut, a dream traveller, reawakens perpetually into a dream. Confusing memories and reality, he tries to use dream logic to return to his sleeping body. As he occupies your consciousness, he guides you through the park and through to his realisation of the somber truth.

By Joel Cahen. Commissioned by METAL. 2015

TEFFRADOT

A new opera by Rebecca Horrox. set in motion by a walking audience in the mountains of Eryri (Snowdonia). Heard via headphones, it relays a modern myth set around Lyn Idwal, the lake at the bottom of a glacial valley. Through song, eight characters, Sundew, Butterwort, Ceffyl Dwr, Dragon, Prince, Rock, Pen-Bele God of Death and the Teffradot emerge from the water, ice, rock, flora and fauna voicing stories of shape-shifters, immortals from the other-world, the eternal and ephemeral beings of Cwm Idwal.

Traditional welsh melodies are cut-up, rearranged and transformed, echoing the scarred, shattered rock face.

Commissioned by Soundlands 2015.