Beneath Puget by DAC Crowell

Many people in Seattle, I don't think, realize that a darkened, mysterious world exists only a few miles away, a thousand feet or so beneath their feet.

This work is actually a 'subset' of another work strictly intended for live performance, "Puget", which runs around two hours time. The inspiration for this was from travel to the Puget Sound region some years ago, when I would take ferry trips across the sound, often at night, passing over this deep, hidden world, sometimes through mists of light rain that appeared and disappeared as the boat passed over the depth below. While it consists of the underpinning 'sublayer' for the larger work, "Beneath Puget" also functions as a standalone composition, consisting of the modular synthesizer substrata and a few of the theremin 'events' of the larger piece.

The synthesizer part is interesting in that the elaborate patch functions in such a way that minute, gradual changes actually take time to affect the system's overall equilibrium, such that playing this part doesn't equate to a direct result. Rather, the modular system is being 'steered' over intervals of time, much as a large watercraft would take time to change course, reinforcing the aesthetic of a craft making its way across the deep waters below, and the passage of the ship (and others, as well) as experienced from deep beneath the surface.

This work was composed and realized in Autumn, 1998. "Puget" itself was premiered a few months later, in January of 1999.

Composer/performer in electronic and electroacoustic media, concentrating on avant-garde ambient works. Studied with John Anthony Lennon, Salvatore Martirano and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Also known to do vaporwave and related sorts of sonic tampering. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, he currently resides and creates in Champaign, Illinois.

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