GAM2012 News
- Created: Tuesday, April 24 2012 08:38
A British musical group named "Zinta & The Zoots" recently gave a most unusual concert at Canterbury College, England. Joining the band for the live performance was an enigmatic musical contributor, whose part was originated some 11,000 years earlier—the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.
Thanks to radio astronomer Jan van Muijlwijk and his team of astronomers and amateur radio buffs, the historic 83-foot radio telescope at Dwingeloo in Holland was pointed at Cas A, a powerful source of radio-frequency emissions in the constellation Cassiopeia, in order to relay the live signal to the stage in Canterbury during the performance. These electromagnetic waves, on arrival at Earth, were morphed with Zinta’s live vocal using a Vocoder, creating a synthesis of two temporally distinct sound sources, fusing human and cosmic "voices" across time and space.
This video of the song "Snowstorm World," featuring Cas A and created especially for GAM 2012, is an extract from the performance "Time Pieces," a collaborative concert between the band Zinta & The Zoots and Simon Marchant, on the theme of exploring the fascinating relationship between time and music. It was hosted, filmed and recorded live at Canterbury College, Canterbury, England on the 27th of October 2011. The concert was part of Simon Marchant’s Master’s Degree in Audio Technology for The London College of Music.
This piece was originally written by Zinta Egle and Simon Marchant in 2004. The song documents the story of a child drawn from slumber to gaze at the night sky, brimming with stars and swirling among dreams.
The band Zinta & The Zoots, led by Ms. Zinta Egle, made their debut performance in Canterbury, England, in 2008. The band embodies a refreshing disregard for genre limitations and expectations. Their focus is on creating melodic, characterful, stand-alone songs and the arrangement ethos is to express each piece in a pure, inventive and authentic way using whatever comes to hand or mind. Whether it’s electric, acoustic, or electronic—from radios to harmoniums to Max/MSP—anything that makes a noise may become part of the backdrop for Zinta’s vocals.
The group recently revisited the radio dish at Dwingeloo to conduct some additional musical experiments—this time treating their song to a "moonbounce." Zinta sang an a cappella version of the song, phrase by phrase, into a hand-held radio transmitter; and this was sent to the Moon via the radio telescope dish, to be returned to Earth as an echo with a 2.5 second delay. The resulting recordings of this event are currently being developed into a new, remixed version of the song.
Watch the music video "Zinta and the Zoots - Snowstorm World"
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