Styal

At the heart of the Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, south of Manchester (UK), turns a great iron waterwheel, the original driving force for the 19th century textile machines still residing within the buildings there. The wheel turns a large and resonant drive shaft, the sound of which can be heard rattling throughout the Mill, amidst a rich collection of other sounds. Various combinations of water power, steam, and electric engines now interact to drive the power looms and other metal and wooden machinery — remnants from the Industrial Revolution.
Inhabiting the mill is a sound world of great volume, vibration, resonance, rhythm, intensity and energy, water and steam, cogs and wheels, switches, belts, pulleys and spindles, steam pipes, groaning and straining machines, delicate threads and textiles. All of this gives rise to a very unique music that inhabits the Mill, the machinery, the floorboards, and the air, and much of it finds its way into Styal. Quarry Bank Mill is, however, only a starting point for this work. Taking the sounds I have found and borrowed from the mill (with some additional sounds of spools of thread and tearing textiles recorded in the studio), I re-shape and re-create a sound world, music, and place of my own imagining.