Recently, I have been obsessed with the appearances of aftermaths, particularly of industrial parties, raves, and concerts. The ringing in your ears, the slightly sticky floor, and the remnants of joy from hundreds of people is something truly powerful to me. Moments like these emphasise the effervescence of music and the connection it brings, and I wanted to write a piece that feels like an echo of these moments and the spaces they take place in, with the electronics representing ghostly echoes of the music that was played, where the ensemble’s material represents more the hazy memories and mixed emotions of these events.

Originally based around pachinko machines – a type of arcade gambling machines found mainly in Japan, this piece examines the results of repetitive actions, and how much trust we put into repetitive actions.

Having originally set out to write a generally fun-sounding piece with a more digital and arcade-like aesthetic, I eventually found myself in the writing of this piece trusting far too much the repetitive actions within composition and everyday life. Despite the sound world of this piece being so chaotic, it is incredibly repetitive and often finds itself in spirals and loops, to then quickly break out of them into a calmer setting, something I found myself doing as I wrote this piece, breaking between extensive composition periods, to time doomscrolling, to then having to attend to everyday duties and expectations.

I want to present these repetitive actions through the object of the pachinko machine, with its seemingly endless metal balls and marbles cascading through its innards, but in a way that places it as a higher, almost god-like power. In this world the pachinko machine is worshipped as a deciding factor of what a day might seem like: will these repetitive actions, this gambling, save you? Or will it make every day seem the same?

Based on arcade games and particularly on the game Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), this piece is made to both challenge the performer and have them engage with the electronic track in a way similar to DDR that has them pre-empting the movement they must make through the repetition of patterns.

I wrote this piece with the instruction from Ozgur to make it “as ridiculous as possible,” whilst also taking account of both my own and Ozgur’s non-classical music. Included in the track is a “narrator” role: a figure who is supposed to guide you through a game, but seems to have a shorter temper here...