Totem Electric

“Locusts are special species of grasshopper that can breed rapidly and subsequently become gregarious and migratory when their populations become dense enough. They are nomadic and rapidly strip fields and greatly damage crops.”

This music work was inspired by numerous hours spent listening to crickets. The sounds that are used on the fixed media part come from recordings of these insects but also from synthetic sounds that are close to their morphologies. These sound sources are manipulated in a way that was inspired by their typical phasing sounds and their extraordinary jumping abilities. The fixed media part accompanies, ornaments, doubles and even confronts the organophonist throughout music that is based on the dialog between the two media.