pool

  • Title: Track 1
  • Album: Unknown Album (19/04/2009 11:42:04 AM)
  • Track: 1
  • Genre: Other
  • Length: 3:43 minutes (8.51 MB)
  • Format: Stereo 44kHz 320Kbps (CBR)
  • Stats: , 0 downloads, 42 plays
Lunatic Road

Audio: Lunatic Road

from aPatchi creations, 19.04.09

When I think of city nights, it is the long drive out of the city that is most vivid in my mind...

Lunatic Road

City nights...rambling.
Twice in, the same out.
Week in, weak out
I drive on.

The road with its
bone braille surface suffers time,
while I think about how it felt
to find the car still in its park,
intact.

Home.
Straight ahead...
Straight as a line drawn by free hand
and forty minutes more.

If only reds were green.
If 70 was 90.
Get off my...
this is not a game.

Thirty minutes more.

Metal swerves metal.
Blink, miss the elbow, exposed,
scrawled blue.

Elbow man turns his head.
Elbow friend flirts with intent.
Blink to the hand brawl behind glass
Blink to the rattletrap snake, left
right...left...right...left...right...left
Flinch as metal meets

nothing.

While I drive on,
the road with its bone braille surface
suffers fools and city nights.

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  • Anonymous's picture

    22.06.09 — Winston

    Hi Imogen, congratulations

    Hi Imogen,

    congratulations for being picked for the "360" broadcast. I missed the airing last Saturday but will download and listen. Hope to hear more from you. Well done.
    Winston

  • Anonymous's picture

    06.06.09 — Winston

    Hi Imogen, Thanks for

    Hi Imogen,

    Thanks for putting the *.mp3 up for me, it made listening much more enjoyable.
    I liked both the text and the audio, and in particular your evasive phrases and quirky associations: bone Braille, elbow man, rattletrap (haven’t heard that in a looong time) snake, etc. The whole piece has that partially concentrating ambience that is late night driving: suddenly snapping back to what’s going on; the threatening proximity of a car drawing up next to you. Lovely stuff.

    The audio has a very different feel to the text, and draws some text suggestions from me (minor really, but your reading showed them up). I think “this is not a game” would sound better as ‘it’s not a game’, and “right...left...right...left...right...left” might sound better with one less “…right…left”. These were only noticed from the audio.

    I very much like the piano (a fan of improvised piano). The treble creates an image of wet roads, just after the rain has stopped, reflections everywhere, sparkling lights. However, could I suggest a different recording method. You have pushed your voice way off to the side by having it in only the right channel. This makes it remote and thin when listening in stereo. Your voice needs to be dead centre to the sound stage to give it more depth. Check out a recording by a female singer (say Diana Krall) with piano accompaniment. Her piano keyboard is spread evenly from Left to Right channel, but her voice comes right at you from dead centre. This positioning increases the presence of the voice and enriches the lyrics. I think it would really improve your audio version.
    Looking forward to more of your text and audio.
    Winston

  • Anonymous's picture

    07.06.09 — aPatchi creations

    Thankyou for your comments

    Thankyou for your comments and advice! It's fantastic to receive such an indepth response (I will definately be trying out your recording suggestion when I get a free minute!) Cheers, Imogen

  • Anonymous's picture

    01.06.09 — Winston

    Hi Imogen, would you be able

    Hi Imogen,

    would you be able to make your audio available for download as well as streaming? I'm on a dial-up and can't listen to it on the web site.
    Winston

  • Anonymous's picture

    03.06.09 — aPatchi creations

    Hi Winston, Thankyou for

    Hi Winston,
    Thankyou for your interest in my work! You should be able to download the file now. Cheers, Imogen

  • Anonymous's picture

    21.04.09 — mandrillus

    I really liked your

    I really liked your composition...it really evoked a sense of foreboding..and the repetitive piano right hand phrases reminded me of blurred traffic signal noises.
    Ben

  • Anonymous's picture

    22.04.09 — aPatchi creations

    Thanks Ben! For me this

    Thanks Ben! For me this composition is all about the blurred way home...and how everything looks the same after a while! Cheers, Imogen

  • Anonymous's picture

    19.04.09 — Gretchen Miller

    oh yes, who doesn't know

    oh yes, who doesn't know that feeling...
    amazement that yes, the car is still there (have you ever gone to it to find it's not? I have. and I just couldn't believe it. Kept going back to where it was, and twas as if there was a hole where it ought to be. as if it had become invisible, but was there, really. I kept staring at that hole, waiting for it to rematerialise!)
    not to mention, endless frustrations with roads so well known, red after red,
    countless near misses... oh boy. the near misses.
    so what did you mean by rattletrap snake?
    and the music... is it yours? an interesting choice. relentless, sure, as the repeated trip ... but somehow piano for me doesn't quite capture the essential hollowness of gradually emptying roads... or the emptiness of mind as you follow well worn routes and almost meditate on the day gone by and the day to come. but then, maybe it does capture the rippling repetitive patterns of the mind as you drive...
    the road with its bone braille (sentient?) surface ... what it has to bear. hmmm.
    Anyway, what am I going on about, it's late!
    cheers
    Gretchen
    (city nights producer)

  • Anonymous's picture

    20.04.09 — aPatchi creations

    Hi Gretchen! I actually

    Hi Gretchen! I actually haven't had the experience of coming back to an empty park...but I can definately imagine the feeling, and I'm always relieved to come back to a car!!
    Your comment about the piano is really interesting, because when I originally came up with the idea for this audio track, it was going to be a soundscape with pauses, (to give the effect of hollow silences), between sections of music/text to evoke the sense of an empty road at night. But when I was composing the music, I liked the piece so much, that I decided to leave it as it was and just have the text running over the top of it. I think I do hear the piano as the "rippling repetitive patterns of the mind" - but I still like the idea of creating a version of this that is more sparse...it would be interesting for me now to experiment with what I originally had in mind! Cheers, Imogen

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