REW • PLAY • FFWD [2024] • for orchestra & electronics

Composed from childhood memories, in this work I was inspired by the sounds produced by the magnetic tape, a recording technology used in cassettes and VHS which introduced me to music and films. Using this type of media meant spending time manipulating the player/recorder by pressing the different buttons available: «rewind», «fast-forward», «stop», «play», «pause», «rec». By rewinding

- a necessary step in order to listen to the beginning of a cassette - we could listen to sounds accelerated, in reverse and transposed. If one were to unintentionally press the «rec» button, it could overwrite part of the original tape, forever changing its content and altering the perception of the whole thing. To make a compilation, you had to spend a lot of time pressing the different buttons in order to synchronize the source cassette and the recording cassette and patiently wait for each of them to play before pressing «stop» and move on to the next one.

The more we used these cassettes, the more they deteriorated and produced pitch variations, random loops, white noise or other types of defects that I find interesting today. This piece is a free transcription of the memories left by the use of this technology.

SWR Symphonieorchester

Vimbayi Kaziboni • Conductor

Matthias Schnider • Sound Engineer

Premiered at Donaueschinger Musiktage 2024