fortress by jon birdsong

This was recorded in a giant empty building: Fort 8, Hoboken, Belgium.

This building has the strange history of being built for nothing. It is a fortress built in the mid/late 1800’s and was obsolete at its completion due to the rapidly changing technology of warfare at the time. It is a massive structure with endless mysterious passages, hallways, rooms, arches, columns, and doors. It is abandoned now but now structurally maintained by the state. Its future is uncertain and its past is without purpose.

We used trumpets and speakers and toys and a harp to project sound throughout the space and recorded them, actually recording more the building itself. The music is all original except Syrinx, by Claude Debussy. It is music that the building itself dictated, built for nothing, used for nothing, and therefore beautiful.