Black Box White Cube
Black Box White Cube embraces merging organic electronica, live instrumentation, and field recording, drawing inspiration from experiences with outdoor spaces and natural phenomena. Influenced by the impact of site-specificity and place on memory, the project draws together influences from post-prog, art-rock, math-rock, post-rock, and the blues, alongside dark ambient and trip-hop motifs.
With a meticulous approach to layering, Black Box White Cube weaves together iterative melodies, drones, building rhythms, and evocative harmonies. Field recordings captured in unique landscapes fuel instrumentation and explorative sound design in production, creating a sonic tapestry that speaks to our connection with a place—social, cultural and environmental. The result is an immersive listening experience that explores interventions between landscape and soundscape via big build-ups, tension, and release.
Feather
A corrugated desert road and a damaged guitar… This track pays homage to one of my guitars that took on some new "character" in an unprecedented heatwave while crossing the Painted Desert – Antakirinja Country. The track features the heat and corrugated road-treated guitar – belted, strummed, eBowed, and Nashville-strung, along with a few sneaky field recordings from the site and samples. I will never work with so many acoustic guitar layers again. The self-imposed bounds were a fun challenge but it was difficult for me to conjure desert strata focus from the resonant mud. Like an unexpected winter desert heat with hundreds of kilometres of corrugated road ahead, just got to accept it and move forward, hoping everything holds together.
The Gully
Guided by respected custodian Uncle David King, I took an array of long field recordings at strategic points around 'The Gully', Garguree, Katoomba. Continuing production, I worked to trigger samples from transient qualities in the audio. These form a basis for the song. I produced to these like beats and click tracks until it was time for some intuitive live instrumentation. I bottled up the experience of being immersed in the site, recalling my state when wandering off track alone immediately after learning of the significance, appalling history and hope of where I walked, then conveyed my experience in a couple of guitar takes. For me, the track is like needing to run but having nowhere to run to.
Hold Down
Hold Down. Continuing surf motifs, this track's narrative is guided by the tension between remaining calm and fighting disorientation and panic when pinned underwater by the force of a large wave. Panic is the enemy of time but time slows as adrenaline rises. The scenario is auditory and visual – always with eyes closed. Clicks and crackles of the submerged environment mix with recent visuals experienced and distant visceral memories (probably wishing I was back out of the water and not in a hold down). I feel I stepped up a notch in production, mixing and mastering this one… exploring 'saturation' to manipulate perceived 'loudness' in sound design – a battle between preferred dynamics and modern streaming and listening devices. This includes the excessive application of saturation used for sub-bass harmonics, experimentation with signal phasing, limiting compression and signal clipping.
Streaming
Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube | Deezer | Amazon Music | Tidal
Branding, Supporting Animation and Audio Reactive Video Work
From late 2020 to 2021, I embarked on an audio recording and production project called Black Box White Cube, which I was lucky enough to get online distribution for. Growing up with a father who ran a recording studio housed in a unique octagon-shaped sandstone and mudbrick building, this project allowed me to reconnect with my deep-seated knowledge of acoustics, audio engineering, and mastering in my AV media practice. While releasing four singles as a recording musician, including "Hold Down" in April 2021, I experienced a cathartic exploration of audio production and sound design. Moreover, this project provided me with the opportunity to actively engage with emerging motion graphic platforms in the realm of music streaming services and music promotion. While I grapple with the challenges of streaming distribution fairness for independent artists and labels, it is exciting to witness the emergence of motion-driven variations of cover art.