Michael Begg feat. Black Glass Strings (Clea Friend, Aisling O’Dea, Julia Lungu)
WITNESS 5
Omnempathy
Bandcamp download, OMWI05
Download link:
https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com/album/witness-5
Release Info:
In Witness 5, Begg brings his Witness Pentatology to a close with the projects most assured statement. Air quality data from around the world was consumed using his bespoke Witness Engine composition software. The data was provided by openAQ, an international activist organisation whose mission is to tackle air inequality. Individual readings for ozone, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and air particulates was sniffed by the witness engine, with the resulting compositions being distributed to the string section of Begg’s Black Glass Ensemble. The players improvisations were then mixed in to some of the recordings along with some keyboard work and post production processing from Begg himself. The result is the closest he has yet come to his promise of creating new music for the anthropocene that speaks to the growing sense of solastalgia. Unsettlingly still, elegiac and deeply touching.