Our London interlude, whilst we await our return, seems best broken up by visits back to Wales. A trip to Snowdonia, for a sound art site-specific piece, is perfect. Baked by sun and motorways we’re glad to ascend the winding road to the mountains and don hats and discard coats at the packed car-park for Cwm Idwal glacial valley. But we’ve forgotten it’s now late in the day and most people only amble up to the lake, a gentle stroll up a winding, stone-faced path – whilst we’re here for the full experience, replete with sonic accompaniment by artist Rebecca Horrox. Quite quickly, I realise the sun-hat doesn’t work with big ear-cup headphones and then the wind comes out to play as we near the lake. Rebecca later tells us the wind always travels down this basin of mountains in one direction only, sweeping across the lake like a familiar spirit. Once the head-phone, smart-phone configuration is working we mostly don’t need to press any buttons but can just walk the lake circumference, each new opus of song and story greeting us periodically. I wonder if I’m going to feel somewhat removed from the experience of the place itself, but actually the headphones mean that Dan and I mostly don’t talk and can just absorb mountains, light and lake, all augmented by gorgeous, haunting music.
Teffradot opera and libretto are composed with sounds and rhythms derived from Welsh folk songs and it’s as if we’re been given a key, through our contemporary devices, to voices and music which are an inherent, ancient part of the landscape. Rebecca has uncovered the mysticism of the place itself but this only works because it also sounds contemporary, evolving and not cliché. A modern-day reawakening of age-old welsh mythology. I listen in Welsh, Dan in English. Poetry and theatre merges with theatre of the landscape, space and detail of the music echoing both the raw macro of the land around us and the vivid minutiae of small plant life and rocks. The hunt to follow the last part of the route closes as we drop down from grasslands to a secluded fissure in the rock.
Afterwards, we are quiet, moved. And keen to go back. Some weeks later, we meet Rebecca Horrox in London: an industrial area and east London warehouse, not dissimilar to where we lived for seven years. The same story of buildings transformed to studios by artists, later enticing landlords to demand higher rent. She is bubbly and enthusiastic, and remembers her childhood in Wales fondly. She initially trained in visual arts, before moving in to performance based work and sound. Her approach to sound is grounded in a visual arts training, then expanded by a Masters degree in performance. The Soundlands commission at Cwm Idwal was an opportunity to rediscover Wales, seek out songs and stories and musicians, steeped but not confined by folk music.
For more info on Teffradot and Rebecca Horrox...
