Cosmic Time is a new work for percussion and electronics created by visual artist Michaela Gleave, experimental instrumental and electronic composer Amanda Cole and contemporary percussionist Louise Devenish.
Originally, the work was developed for live performance with four percussionists, each representing a different ‘spirit’ of the universe, with costumes designed not only for their appearance but also for their sonic qualities, rustling and swirling as the percussionists moved around the stage. The visual aspect is obviously missing from this studio version, but the creators were keen to emphasise the collaborative inputs of all three artists on both the audio and visual aspects of the project.
The four performers on the album are percussionists Louise Devenish, Hamish Upton, Kaylie Melville and Nat Grant, four members of The Sound Collectors Lab, a percussion-focused collective of researchers, artists, performers and academics based at Monash University, Australia. The group was established by Devenish in 2012, and has been in its current formation since 2020. In eight interweaving tracks performed over 40 minutes, the performers explore ‘representations of time ranging from the endless circling of planetary forms, to… human breath and the fluttering heartbeats of desert mice’.Footnote 1 The work ‘takes concepts of time on a cosmological scale’,Footnote 2 with the creators researching different historical, musical and scientific methods of conceptualising sound, from orbital resonance to harmonic sequencing. Fortunately for this reviewer, who barely has GCSE-level knowledge on the subject, the listener does not have to understand complex scientific ideas in order to appreciate the work.
The album opens with Big Bang. The shortest track, a single huge crash of gongs and cymbals is left to ring for 40 seconds, giving the listener space to enjoy the pulsing resonances. Cosmic Soup is a primordial soundscape of swirling sub-bass frequencies, thunder and wind, with occasional higher harmonics emerging from the darkness. Galactic features singing bowls, vibraphone, glockenspiel, tapped and bowed metal and glass sounds, creating delicate bursts of crystalline resonance. This is also the case with the beginning of track 4, Stellar, in which lighter bells, triangles, crotales and finger cymbals portray a galaxy filled with twinkling stars, while the sub-bass rumbling of the universe continues almost imperceptibly underneath, filling the space between the pinpricks of light. As we get closer to our own earthly landscape in Planetary, a pulse becomes apparent – the high-pitched metallophones of the previous track now producing a curtain of sound with identifiable rhythmic patterns, enveloping the slower footsteps of terrestrial evolution played on the lower notes of the vibraphone.
While the previous tracks have all flowed more or less seamlessly into each other, there is a now a brief pause before Chemical, and the soundscape changes considerably. Now there are electronically manipulated sounds of brushes and drumskins – solids, liquids and gases melding in a quiet bluster of activity that evokes the sounds hidden below the surface in Big Bang, now very much apparent as we have zoomed in with our sonic microscope. For the first time in this generally meditative album, there is a real feeling of industry and impatience.
Track 8 considers Biological time, and we now clearly hear membranophones presenting the pulse of our hearts, our eardrums, our bellies, our skin. Moving gradually over six and a half minutes from untuned bass drums through timpani, higher and higher toms up to congas and bongos, before finishing with woodblocks, claves and castanets, we hear the heartbeats of earth's creatures from blue whales to the tiniest insects. The clarity of direction in this movement does not, however, make it predictable, and the skill of the players in blending between one group of instruments and the next means we are carried along with the sounds without it being jarring. At the conclusion of the track, the metal and glass sounds begin to return, leading us into the last movement, Esoteric. Here, the players consider time as a spiritual journey, a transportation beyond and space and time as we learn who we are and consider our place in the universe. The abundant use of singing bowls on this track provides this contemplative atmosphere as – apart from their obvious connection to meditative practice – the players allow time for each note to breathe, to resonate, to bloom, to beat against other resonances and – in the end – to die out.
If all of this sounds very clichéd and obvious, you would be forgiven for thinking so. There is a very clear, programmatic journey on this album that is not to everybody's taste: the Big Bang represented directly as a big bang; each movement getting less and less ethereal as we are guided from the outer reaches of the cosmos to the heartbeats of individual organisms. From the opening track the piece does exactly what you expect it to do, and this is how the Sound Collectors Lab sell themselves short. What sets Cosmic Time apart from the myriad other pieces about the cosmos is its interdisciplinarity: the live performance featuring elaborate sound-making costumes, and the research into many different methods of measuring time, used as material and inspiration for the composition. In releasing Cosmic Time as an audio-only download, both of these aspects are lost on the listener. With the flexibility of an online release, would it not have been possible to have included some video clips of the performance and a brief explanation of the research process?
What I find more satisfying, however, is the skill of the creators and the performers in choosing their sounds carefully, giving each movement time to develop without outstaying its welcome. While this album may not provide anything particularly new, it does what it does very well, without sounding like something you may hear piped through the speakers of a health spa. I am particularly struck with the restraint of the performance – at no point is there a sound or individual performance that intrudes on the atmosphere being created at that time. Each movement is discrete but blends beautifully into the next, making a balanced whole, a reflection of the egalitarian nature of The Sound Collectors Lab themselves, who from the outset have focused on ‘plurality and collaboration’.Footnote 3
Without knowing the interdisciplinary context or scientific background to the research, there is little on this release that would particularly challenge the listener. Yet I would highly recommend setting aside 40 minutes to turn down the lights, get comfortable and listen to this album on headphones. Gleave, Cole and Devenish have created a beautiful meditation on time and space, and taking a moment to slow down and join them is a very welcome experience.
