Rough Currency: PHILIP JECK soundscape - 'Vinyl / Pirates' by Rough Currency

Vinyl / Pirates is the soundscape by Philip Jeck, commissioned to accompany Rough Currency, the poetry pamphlet collection by writer Rebecca Sharp (Tapsalteerie 2021).

Rough Currency is available here: http://www.tapsalteerie.co.uk/product/rough-currency-by-rebecca-sharp/

Composed in response to Rough Currency’s central poem 'Vinyl / Pirates', Jeck's soundscape also evokes the tone of the whole collection. Rebecca Sharp received an RSL Literature Matters Award from The Royal Society of Literature to write Rough Currency, which also enabled her to invite Philip Jeck to compose this score.

Philip Jeck:
“My starting point from Rebecca's text [the poem ‘Vinyl / Pirates’] were the musical references – to Motown and Joni Mitchell. Three or four "quotes" can be found in the soundtrack, manipulated not quite beyond recognition. These sounds are the basis of the complete recording with additional sounds that I felt related to the sea and to oil. The sound is not an aural representation of Rebecca's writing but my own reaction to it.”

Rebecca Sharp:
“Rough Currency explores the poetics of oil and the imagination, our relationship to mineral worlds and energy production - where and how we place ourselves within these processes, and ways we have become disconnected. I also wanted readers to have access to a multi-textural experience of the themes and feelings explored by the poems. Philip and I have worked together on a previous collaboration (Rules of the Moon, 2013) – knowing the ways that he works with vinyl sampling, and given that vinyl itself is an oil product, it felt like the perfect fit. To my mind Philip’s score evokes visceral tones both industrial and organic; deep layers of memory and sense perception – and echoes my own intentions within the text with heart-rending effect.”

A preview selection of poems from Rough Currency was awarded 2nd prize in the inaugural Art of Energy Award, organised to celebrate the launch of the world's first Centre for Energy Ethics, at the University of St Andrews (Feb 2021).

Cover image by Steve Smart.

www.philipjeck.com
www.rebeccajoysharp.com