The Dialogues: Monty Adkins

It’s a real pleasure to present a new instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. This episode is in conversation with composer Monty Adkins, whose music i’ve written about many times on 5:4 and hold in very high regard. Our discussion explores a wide range of topics, including the fundamental aspects of Adkins’ compositional aesthetic, the history and development of his practice, the influence of visual art throughout his output alongside musical influences, considerations of beauty, narrative vs. abstract approaches to composition, the relationship between and implications pertaining to ‘authentic’ and artificial sonic environments, types of listening, perceptions of time, notions of the sacred, the imposition (and benefits) of compositional restrictions, the organisation/structuring of non-teleological music, combining electronics with live instruments, and Adkins’ relationship with the listener. In the course of our conversation, several articles and papers written or co-authored by Adkins are referred to; all are freely available to download, and links to all of them can be found below.

As before, i’ve included numerous excerpts of Adkins’ work throughout the Dialogue in order to illustrate or clarify what we’re talking about; a complete list of the excerpts is below along with the times in the audio when they occur, and there are links to buy/stream the albums from which they come. As usual the Dialogue is available to download or you can stream it via MixCloud. Despite the considerable length of our conversation, both Adkins and i felt afterwards that there was much more to talk about, so there may well be a second part at some point in the future.

i want to thank Monty for generously giving me so much of his time, and for being prepared to talk so openly (and for so long!) about his life and work. The trajectory his music has taken over the last twenty years is markedly different from many involved in electronic music, and i hope both newcomers and long-standing fans of his work will find our discussion as fascinating and illuminating as i did.

List of papers:

• [60]Project: Conception, Composition and Archiving (with Michael Gatt)
• Issues of Live-ness in fragile.flicker.fragment
• The Influence of Futurist painting in my music
• Towards ‘a beautiful land’: Compositional strategies and influences in Five Panels (no. 5)

List of excerpts:

• 00:00:05 Memory Box (from Fragile.Flicker.Fragment)
• 00:10:45 Clothed in the Soft Horizon (from Fragmented Visions)
• 00:16:06 Silk to Stone (from Mondes inconnus)
• 00:24:03 Mapping (from Fragmented Visions/Mondes inconnus)
• 00:31:31 Noumena (from Cultures électroniques 15)
• 00:39:31 Melt (from Fragmented Visions/Mondes inconnus)
• 00:46:18 Shadows and Reflections (forthcoming on Crónica; not yet available)
• 00:55:46 ufs_2 (from Unfurling Streams)
• 01:02:30 Symbiont (from Mondes inconnus)
• 01:13:07 Still Time (from Mondes inconnus)
• 01:23:55 Breaking (from Fragmented Visions)
• 01:29:51 Cortex (from Mondes inconnus)
• 01:39:36 Extended Vocal (from [60]Project)
• 01:47:05 Noise Study (from [60]Project)
• 01:54:04 Deep Field (from Mondes inconnus)
• 02:00:32 Ambient Instrumental (from [60]Project)
• 02:08:14 Residual Forms (from Residual Forms)
• 02:15:13 Panel No. 4, to Rose (from Five Panels)
• 02:24:40 Torn Mosaic (from Fragile.Flicker.Fragment)
• 02:35:40 Panel No. 5, to Finn (from Five Panels)
• 02:45:38 Ecstatic Drift (from Rift Patterns)
• 02:54:13 Permutations (from Four Shibusa)
• 03:00:32 Tender light, calmed air (from Rift Patterns)
• 03:06:17 ufs_1 (from Unfurling Streams)
• 03:15:28 Anisoptera (from Lépidoptères)
• 03:25:27 With Small Hands Waving (from Evidence of Intense Beauty)
• 03:31:36 Imperfect Forms 09 (from Imperfect Forms – The Music of Kenneth Kirschner Remixed)
• 03:38:42 Saturniid (from Lépidoptères)

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