This album serves as an archive of documentation for The Book of Hours, a durational performance I did in January/February, 2022. I lived in a gallery space for 6 days, improvising electro-acoustic pieces every three hours according to the daily schedule of prayer laid out in the Medieval devotional text, the Canonical Hours: midnight, 3am, sunrise, 9am, noon, 3pm, sunset, 9pm.
The sound remained on continuously throughout the week - each piece would begin from the soundscape that was left from the previous piece, three hours prior. The pieces ranged in duration from around 10 minutes up to 30 minutes. When not improvising (or sleeping) I read, wrote, and thought about the concepts of time.
The recordings presented here are unedited with only basic mastering compression has been applied. "Wrong" notes, intermittant cables, and out-of-tune oscillators are all laid bare and presented as truthful documentation of the pieces I created over the course of 6 days.
credits
released June 10, 2022
Composed and captured by Alex Hawthorn, Jan 30th - Feb 5, 2022
Mastered by Alex Hawthorn, June 2022
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