O great pachinko machine in the sky, what wonders do you have for me today?
piano and fixed electronics
2025
duration: 6' 30"
commissioned by Ilayda Deniz Oğuz
This piece was first premiered on the 1st of July 2025 at the Royal College of Music, London by Rishi Mirchandani
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 placed it as this 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?
© 2025 Thomas Shorthouse
