ICMC BOSTON 2025
Online Listening Room
Curiosity, Play, Innovation - A 50th Anniversary Celebration of Creativity in Music, Science, and Technology
June 8-14, 2025
ICMC BOSTON 2025: Online Listening Room #7, #8
ID#: 540
When it Gives (2025) ; 8:24
by Graeme Truslove
University of the West of Scotland
When It Gives is an acousmatic work in two movements that traces the evolution of unstable sonic materials within immersive spatial environments. The title refers to the second movement, which explores the unease of a material on the verge of collapse. The composition incorporates sounds such as glass collisions, plucked cactus spikes, breaking polystyrene, running water, tin foil, prepared guitar strings, and synthesized tones. The first movement centers on an algorithmic system of evolving quartal trichords that form a harmonic field in flux. Microtonal textures emerge as descending glissandi, articulated from different spatial positions, intertwine and gradually darken before dissolving into the second movement. Here, the focus shifts to polystyrene, where a language of pre-breakage ‘cracks’ and ‘squeaks’ is explored, heightening the notion that something is about to give. These textures accumulate, amplifying tension until the material gives way, followed by the fragile aftermath of fractured pieces settling into silence. The work was shaped through specialized software integrating improvisation, microtemporality, harmonic evolution, and ambisonic spatialization, ensuring precise control over evolving sonic materials. These processes shape the two overlapping movements, leading listeners through a dynamic interplay of instability, rupture, and stillness.
Graeme Truslove
Graeme Truslove is a composer and performer based in Glasgow, Scotland. His output includes sonic and audio-visual compositions and improvised music (playing guitar and/or laptop). His work explores the tension between intuitive performance and fixed-medium composition, often incorporating microtemporal and immersive sound techniques. He holds an M.Eng in Electronics with Music and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of Glasgow. He lectures in Composition and Music Technology at the University of the West of Scotland. His work has been performed and exhibited internationally, receiving awards and nominations from Metamorphoses (1st Prize), the Salford Sonic Research Commission (UK), Creative Scotland, the British Council, PRSF (UK), Dewar Arts Award (Scotland), SGAE (Spain), Phonos Foundation (Spain), Lumen Prize (shortlisted), and ICMA (USA). His compositions, performances, and audio-visual works have featured at festivals, exhibitions, and broadcasts worldwide. Internationally, these include SFMOMA (USA), TIES (Canada), ELO (USA), ICMC (various), UCSD, Electronic Music Midwest (USA), Noche Blanca (Chile), FILE (Brazil), ICAT (Brazil), ICCG (Taiwan), ICIV (France), and StillReel (Australia); L’ESPACE DU SON (Brussels), Sonica (Glasgow), Sonic Fusion (Salford), Seeing Sound (Bath), Sound Festival (Aberdeen), Noise Floor (UK), Sonorities (Belfast), Soundproof (Edinburgh), Generative Art Conference (Italy), Radiocentraal (Belgium), and GAMeC (Bergamo, Italy). His music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, Radio Panik (Belgium), RNE3 (Spain), O Dominío dos Deuses (Portugal), Eldoradio Klangwelden (Germany), Sound Art Radio (UK), and Electronic Therapy (France).
His album Intuited Architectures (Crónica Electrónica) received critical acclaim, with positive reviews in Neural, Sound Projector, Blow Up, Nitestylez, Vital Weekly, Chain D.L.K., and other international publications.
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