19'04 2026
ISWC: T-340.351.943.3
Navigating across a misty sea by sound.
Maritime noise music.
An acousmatic composition made up of recorded, sculpted and mixed sounds, ‘Across a misty sea’ also relates a real-life experience of having to navigate by sound when visibility is poor.
Part One: Sounds in the mist. On board a small boat, we navigate cautiously through the fog along the harbour’s exit channel. Landmarks, athough almost invisible, are audible: horns, whistles, bells and sirens mark our path. The rumble of an engine draws nearer; a fishing boat appears close by, roars past us and vanishes into the fog. Then our course is guided by the distant, then piercing, wail of a powerful siren at the end of the jetty, at the exit towards the open sea.
Part Two: an open sea, but with no visibility. On board, the churning, rustling and quivering of the ship’s blind progress through the waves demand constant vigilance. But as the mind relaxes, it becomes gradually overrun by ghosts: perhaps the soft voices of enchanting sirens, or those witches from the mist-shrouded graveyard at the start of Macbeth, fair is foul and foul is fair, or the sudden appearance of the Flying Dutchman’s dreadful ship.
At last, we have reached the safety of land.
The acoustic experience of sea mist is strange: amongst other things, the scattering of water droplets in the atmosphere alters our perception of sounds, which seem ambiguous in terms of direction but closer as they are less attenuated by distance; and disconcerting echoes are reflected back from the contours of an invisible coastline.
Composition diagram : Schema_de_composition_MISTY_SEA.pdf
Image: Sein Island lighthouse
