15 Jul Pioneering project creates a musical history of Essex
A PIONEERING project has led to the Essex Record Office (ERO) and RESONANCE releasing an album which has used the Essex Sounds digitised archive to produce a musical history of the county.
Twelve musicians from RESONANCE – an Essex based music collective – chose samples from the ERO’s Essex Sounds website which they used to create their own compositions.
The album, ‘Recreating the Record’, merges nostalgic sounds with machinery noises to remember Chelmsford’s scientific and industrial heritage, field recordings capture the Essex countryside and Southend seafront while the ambience of Colchester and its famous Zoo blend with trains and sampled orchestral TV programmes.
The sounds have been created to evoke memories of days out in the county and have been combined with introspective electronic melodies.
All proceeds from the album will be donated to the Friends of Historic Essex, a charity which works closely with heritage organisations to preserve the county’s history.
Councillor Graham Butland, Essex County Council Cabinet Member for Devolution, the Arts, Heritage and Culture, said: “This is a truly wonderful musical project which has repurposed a wide range of archived digital recordings to create a new audio sound.
“Recreating the Record’ is an album that symbolises the spirit of revival and restoration, as well as the history and heritage of our wonderful county. It really does make for fascinating listening.”
Chris Adam, RESONANCE co-founder, said: “This was a fantastic opportunity to involve the collective members in an interesting project by using the archives of sound and combining the old with the new to create a new music sound.
“We knew that we wanted to use the word ‘record’ due to its double meaning, but the rest of the title eluded us until we finally settled on ‘recreating’. This summed up the attitude we had of turning the past into something new for the future.”
The ‘Recreating the Record’ album is available from Thursday 15 July 2021 and will be released on RESONANCE’s website: resonancehq.bandcamp.com.
