Clock Change Music
Music by Haworth Hodgkinson
High Moss HM 025 (65:22) • Released 25 October 2020 • Re-released 31 October 2021
All music composed, performed and recorded by Haworth Hodgkinson in 2018 and 2019
Cover from a photograph by Haworth Hodgkinson
Album © Haworth Hodgkinson 2021
Links: Haworth Hodgkinson
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Clock Change Music
Initially I was going to call this album Piano and Ring Modulator, a functional description of the source sounds, emphasising the strictly abstract nature of the music. The title gradually became less appropriate as I worked on the music, as I added tam-tam sounds to the sampled piano sounds that were the main source, and also used other electronic processing techniques in addition to ring modulation.
In 2018, at the time I was working on the music, I acquired a pair of radio-controlled clocks, and I began making videos of the clocks adjusting themselves on the nights in March and October when we lose or gain an hour to daylight saving time. I used parts of this music to accompany the videos, and so an association was formed, leading to my eventual titles for the album and the pieces on it.
Greater Clock Change Music (2018)
Greater Clock Change Music is the main substance of the project. High, ticking piano sounds measure out time in a not always entirely regular manner. The use of a ring modulator distorts the piano into something alien, and the electronics pick up the piano sounds and spin them into a web of resonance and reverberation. Tam-tam sounds also measure time, at a much slower rate. Although the music unfolds continuously according to predefined processes, there are moments of unexpected change and aural illusion. One of the most dramatic moments occurs just over half-way through, when the high ticking of the piano suddenly stops, leaving the electronic reverberations to become the foreground. At the end of the piece the ticking stops once more, although I doubt the listener will have noticed exactly when it re-started.
Lesser Clock Change Music (2019)
Lesser Clock Change Music was a late addition to the project. In contrast to the ambiguous harmony and tonality of Greater Clock Change Music, the lesser cousin is resolutely tonal to the point of being obsessively focussed on a single pitch, repeating and counting time. For the initial release of the album in 2020 I placed this first as a prelude, but in the subsequent months I decided it would work better as a postlude. I re-released the album with the tracks in this order to mark the October clock change in 2021, which coincided nicely with Halloween.
Notes © Haworth Hodgkinson 2020, rev. 2021