Fergus Kelly - Gleaming Seams (2019)

Gleaming Seams is a new 49 minute solo album of 10 compositions based around studio improvisations with found metals and plastics, drums, cymbals and gongs. These have been edited and combined with treated electromagnetic recordings of ATMs, computer drives, ticket dispensers and overhead tram lines. Field recordings have been woven in at some points, as well as brass, snare and orchestral samples to further enrich the sound colour and dynamic of the compositions.

Some field recordings have been made on my mobile when I had nothing else to hand, and involve raw captures of fleeting conversations in shops, on public transport and elsewhere. I like the idea of these sounds being one of many sonic stratas of city life, one that all manner of stories and personalities emerge from, interspersed with all other sounds, a layer of life whose profile and consequent noise floor has risen steeply with the inescapable and increasingly prolific presence of mobile phones, and all the loud, one-way conversations they shove unbidden into urban space.

The various found metals and plastics are part of a collection going back over 30 years, including hub caps, washing machine parts, steel conduit, plastic tubing, car suspension springs, circular saw blades, sundry steel and aluminium containers, beer barrels, Burco boiler (water heater), heavy plastic water canisters, tumble dryer drum and brass military shells. The gunfire and radio comms sounds on Camouflage were sourced from training websites.

Field recordings from various sources include the local bottle bank being emptied, action calls on film set, theatre set construction and backstage sounds, Millenium bridge in London and skateboarders in Barcelona (the latter recorded by Ben Gale and used with kind permission), bumblebees and carpenter bees, crickets, binaural mics inside large Wavin pipe (all recorded in Croatia), and late summer evening birdsong along Dublin's Royal Canal.