Australian composer Thomas Meadowcroft grew up at a time when Australians viewed their physical distance to supposed cultural roots as immense whether to the high culture of Europe or the popular culture of the U.S. Meadowcroft has embraced this critically and made it the focus of his work. Instead of looking for ways to join other musical traditions and histories, his music takes the Australian experience of distance as its central subject matter.
Part of it is the exploration or evocation of feelings of alienation, the lack of context and the falling short. In these pieces this means the use of junk and the embrace of instruments of middle-class domestic music making mostly excluded from art music by definition: electric organs, drum machines, plastic recorders, worn out tapes, etc. Instruments that not only have strong attachments to place and function, but which also tend to enact some kind of musical rationalization to work.
The cheap drum machines in Thomas work are not manipulated or transformed; they need to play their patterns for you to know what they are. Speak Percussion has shaped the sound of 21st century Australian percussion music through the creation and presentation of ambitious arts projects. Lauded as a leader in the fields of experimental and contemporary classical music, Speak has been redefining percussion through a multi-disciplinary and post-instrument-practice. © Mode Records