Axe (2010) Dale Jonathan Perkins

Format: Stereo (original is 5.1)

Duration: 12’30

Axe is composed from unprocessed, but amplified guitar materials that include ‘clicks’, ‘thumps’ and ‘bangs’. It is the first work that falls under the project title, Taking Down Trees, and is influenced by the popular composition technique/style: ‘mashup’. Axe, however, is not a work that plunders previously released audio/music to generate structure. Structure is built from the original electric guitar materials, which are processed and organised into ambient, glitch, heavy metal and dance groove combinations before culminating into a tapestry of popular music references. Very little of the arrangement has been produced by traditional sequencing methods, but rather the materials are sustained for long durations and rhythms are produced using side-chain gating techniques (all source materials were performed by David Lawrie - www.Davidlawrie.co.uk).