Asher Tuil - Automatism (2023)

From Asher

In producing these works I returned for the first time since moving to Providence, RI to a practice of going each day to locations in or around the city to record sounds. I tried to avoid the more urban sound environments and record near one of the many bodies of water or in larger parks and woods.

Returning to my studio I worked with the sounds I had recorded by putting them through a resonant filter in short passages. During the first few days, I layered electronic sounds over them only, but as the project started to take shape I experimented with having broadcast sounds which I had been using in the far background of the initial pieces as a foreground element. The strains of music captured from the radio brought the compositions into focus as the varied sources of sound interacted.

As I reflected on composing the music for this album, I thought about what led me to make the choices I made and which of them seemed inevitable. I had begun by combining some of the sounds in my new locale with sounds produced in my studio in a more or less habitual manner and ended up with something that I hadn’t intended—crafting something but also allowing it to take its own shape.