Heavy Machinery Records is proud to present Undertow – the debut full length LP from Australian electronic composer and cellist Bridget Chappell (Hextape).
Bridget Chappell is an award-winning Australian sound artist working on the unceded lands of the First Peoples of the Millewa-Mallee. Their often data-driven work explores colonial responsibility, the climate crisis, policing and surveillance, and rave nostalgia.
Chappell takes contemporary and historical data of local water management and water colonisation sourced from the City of Melbourne’s Open Data Platform, and runs it through a process of sonification to create UNDERTOW – a stunning original work composed for cello, electronics and Melbourne’s extraordinary public sound sculpture: the Federation Bells. The result is a searingly original data-driven work that combines neoclassical strings, industrial percussion and vaporwave textures to create an exciting and thought-provoking site-specific sound work.
The land where Birrarung Marr Park and the Federation Bells now stand were underwater: forming part of a system of rivers, creeks, marshland and lagoons, much of which today has been driven underground and away from the city’s conscious face. Now contained in a network of drains, some trace an underground path mirroring – or mocking – the rivers’ original flow.
Using the City of Melbourne’s Open Data Platform, Bridget Chappell combines contemporary and historical data of local water management and water colonisation. Through a process of sonification – the musical representation of visual data – they perform an original work: an aural painting of the last 185 years of the Birrarung River (“Yarra”) and Narrm bay (“Port Phillip”) composed for the Federation Bells and cello.
You may know Chappell in another life as the hardcore gabber, jungle, breakbeat, and techno project Hextape, but this is a very different world. Cyclic Defrost
Freshwater Falls’ is a masterclass in utilising outdated musical artefacts in a contemporary context. Great experimental electronica from an artist that has been making the most out of 2020. Weirdo Wasteland
File under: Esoteric Electronics / Industrial Percussion / Contemporary Classical
Deluxe limited edition heavyweight transparent aqua and deep blue coloured 12” Vinyl LP in gatefold sleeve with OBI Strip. Art and Design by Luke Fraser. Cover photo by Neville Bowler.
Limited pressing of 300 copies
Out now – by your limited edition copy on Transparent Aqua and Deep Blue Vinyl here.