Scribbly Gums is a collection of memories. I use specific recollections as a creative spark in my explorations of time and place and the associated tactile and sensory reactions and remembrances. Scribbly Gums encompasses various childhood memories in the outer suburbs of Meanjin/Brisbane and some more recent memories in Naarm/Melbourne and also Kingaroy/Wakka Wakka country. These various memories are connected within a larger web of memoryscapes, an autobiographical aural map. For me, memoryscapes are a type of map that exists both spatially and temporally. A map that not only contains the initial moment or memory in time and place (I was there at that time) but the times I revisit these places both in memory and reality. These memoryscapes instances leave traces that generate new memories and retrace existing memories, creating a pattern not unlike the scribbly gums.
There are two main layers to the process of creating these pieces. Specific memories fuel the creation of raw musical materials via flute explorations or in the case of the interludes, through field recordings. This is then manipulated, reordered, and tinkered with, mostly through a type of collage. This process, for both performance-driven and sampled recordings, reflects the amorphous nature of memory, where memories are reframed, recontextualised, and re-remembered to fit the present. I feel that sound is an artform uniquely positioned to capture the fluid, temporal, and ephemeral nature of memory.
I play on a one-keyed baroque flute as I find it more nuanced and tactile than its modern day equivalent and capable of a rich array of pitch and articulation possibilities.
Read more about the album: meredithbeardmore.com/scribblygums
Meredith Beardmore : Baroque Flute, composition
Recorded by Meredith Beardmore
Mixed by Timothy Franklin
Mastered by Theo Carbo
*Scribbly gum is a type of Eucalyptus tree that has a distinctive scribbly pattern on the bark due to scribbly gum moths. These trees are unique to the east coast of Australia and I grew up a couple of kilometres away from a Scribbly Gum Conservation Area.
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