To be included as one of the four artists contributing to the body of work that will be exhibited as ‘A Dark Light’, the companion piece to ‘New Light’, is an honour. That there are others out there who are intrigued and excited by the project and wish to aid it’s success is incredible.

The trip itself was emotional and inspirational. The initial idea was to gain field recordings to aid and inform composition, but the recordings are so evocative, they became the source material for the tracks.

The process of working with the recordings, isolating sounds, dropping some out, layering some, treating some, leaving some as they were recorded, has been intuitive, and reflects all aspects of the trip.

The sounds compliment the photography aspect (the instant captured moment) as well as the painting aspect (filtering the imagery and atmosphere to produce something original), and the limited daylight hours had a great effect (travelling in the dark, wanting that extra hour, minute, second in some places, needing to get to the next destination), leading me to stretch some sounds. In doing this, in many cases the basis of the sound is exposed and other tones discovered.

I feel the recordings should be likened to some discovered treasure, stumbled across, collected, removed, polished and presented – moments passed, lost in the past, but captured, to be sampled when we wish – almost as if frozen until played. Many of the recordings were taken in remote and desolate places, off the beaten track, and certainly not visited in the winter, leading to the idea of exposing something that, if it weren’t for us, would have never been experienced.

The recordings were released as an album through Filament Recordings in June 2006.

Simon Whetham 2006

Simon has been a musician for almost twenty years, for the most part writing songs, playing guitar and singing in rock bands. In 2000 he composed and recorded an ambient soundtrack to Kathryn Thomas’ first solo London exhibition ‘Atmosphere’ and has continued to record music for her shows, as well as working on his own more experimental pieces. He has also collaborated musically with animators, providing soundtracks to short films, and installation artists, such as Scott Martin at Spike Island in Bristol.

Professionally, Simon is a model maker and has worked within a variety of different fields. Notable projects include Aardman Features’ “Curse of the Were-Rabbit”, “Tomb Raider 2” and the Bristol “Fighter” sports car.