This bold new suite of original music for Bellringers, Improvisers and Electronics features some of the UK's most exciting musicians alongside the award-winning Bellringers of St Paul's Church Birmingham, and live electro-acoustic pieces of remixed field recordings from churches, bells and related found sounds along the way.
Pendulums was commissioned by Ideas of Noise with additional funding from Help Musicians UK and Arts Council England. The recordings for the album were made at the premiere on 8th February 2020 with additional recordings on 27th October 2020 at St Paul’s Church Birmingham.
‘The music on this record is inspired by the sounds, patterns and processes of bellringing. Some of it involves musicians pretending to be bells, other parts involve bellringers pretending to be metronomes, sometimes everyone plays together.
Campanology is an interesting art form in that it embraces many contradictions; it is simultaneously extrovert and introvert, ritual and recreational, music and not-music.
I love the collectivism that I felt from rehearsing with the bellringers at St Paul’s, and the meditative feeling that descends in the ringing chamber when a course is being rung. I hope to capture some of those thoughts in the music, and that you enjoy listening to it.’
Andrew Woodhead
1. Ring Up/Plain Hunt I 07:47
2. Sideways 03:22
3. Changes 09:52
4. Plain Hunt IV 06:18
5. Plain Hunt II 06:23
6. Partials II 04:08
7. Formation 04:28
8. Tolls/Waves 11:45
9. Diagrams 06:27
10. Partials I 04:00
11. Plain Hunt III/Ring Down 03:28
Trumpets:
Sam Wooster
Charlotte Keeffe
Alto Saxophones:
Sam Andreae
Lee Griffiths
Baritone Saxophones:
Helen Pappioannou
Alicia Gardener-Trejo
Live Electronics and Compositions:
Andrew Woodhead
Bellringers:
Tony Daw
Jonathan Thorne
Matthew King
Alex Frye
Graham Kelly
Ros Martin
Angie Wakefield
Richard Grimmett
Recorded 8th February and 27th October 2020 at St Paul’s Church, Birmingham
Mixing and Mastering by Luke Morrish-Thomas
Photographs by Guri Bosh
Design by Tom Chapman
All compositions by Andrew Woodhead
Electronic samples from field recordings by Andrew Woodhead.
Ring Up, Changes, Formation and Ring Down contain melodic and conceptual elements from traditional bell-ringing methods.
