Container Experiments by Ice Locus

During the first ten months of 2022, most of our belongings were in storage due to a sewer flood at home. After the repairs were complete, I had access to our empty steel container for only one evening where we had stored our furniture. I loved the echoes and reverb tail of the space. "Containers Experiment" is an exploration of sonic resonances in this empty 20 foot long x 8.5 foot high storage container. I started off by calculating what sound frequencies and notes may produce standing waves in the air. Then I brought in a bag of instruments (a duduk, a spherical tongue drum, a thunder tube, and some friction mallets), my hands, and voice to see how they would react in the space.

This EP takes the listener from our reality as we enter the container, into an other-worldly sonic universe using my improvised percussion and duduk performances mixed with other sounds I recorded in the container run through various granular synthesizers. The result is lush pads, choirs of my voice, robotic bloops, cascading bells, and melancholy granularized duduks. It ends by bringing the listener back home to our unedited reality where semi-trailers and passenger jets are passing by outside.

Track #1 "Welcome"

The door opens on the container as the listener enters the space. Instantly they are in a hybrid space of this reality with another universe. Pitch-shifted duduk pads and friction mallets dragged along the walls resonate the structure. An interlude of mallets hitting the walls introduces the improvised tongue drum bells that are drenched in the duduk pad sounds.


Track #2 "Walls"

My untrained voice morphs into a choir as my fists pound on the walls. The robot bloops are actually processed duduk sounds. A percussion-solo follows using a large thunder tube instrument, frictional mallets, and the steel walls - all played over the "Ah's" of the choir.


Track #3 "Flow"

This universe is an amorphous flow of sound and time. The listener is surrounded by cascading temporal bells moving forwards and backwards in the 4th dimension. My pitch-shifted whistling and mallet strikes are the sonic soil for the other sounds to grow on. The improvised duduk phrases add to the mysterious atmosphere.


Track #4 "Farewell"

Granularized duduk is the sad farewell song as the listener leaves this alternate universe and returns home. The low rumble of plane engines ebbs and flows as the traveller rides the sound waves back. It ends back in this reality with the unedited recording of the spherical tongue drum as semi-trucks drive by and I walk out of the container shutting the door behind me.

Ice Locus is an experimental synthesis project by engineer Jared Kozub from the icy heart of Canada. He composes and performs music by combining modular synthesizers with sampled field recordings, and other acoustic instruments. Other sonic curiosities are used for sound design and exploration.

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