Red Note’s Sound and Music Embedded Composer in Residence, Thomas Butler‘s new work Elbow Room explores the psychogeography of cites; how we affect the city and how the city affects us.
The culmination of an 18 month residency with Red Note, Elbow Room uses composition, performance and field recording techniques to tell the story of the mid-twentieth century plan to demolish the city of Glasgow and replace it with a futuristic concrete utopia; an architect’s view of a healthier, more rational and productive city, for a healthier, more rational and productive population.
Mixing period films from the Scottish Screen Archive, which extol the virtues of the Glasgow of the future, with new sound recordings made in the city and a virtuosic score featuring violin, cello, percussion, electric guitar, synthesizer, clarinet and bass clarinet, Elbow Room is a nostalgic reflection upon fantasy and reality, ideal and actuality.
