Into the Music

About The Project

Barrow Lives And Times Around Recorded Music, by John Hall

Into the Music presents 6 audio montages of conversation, music and readings of new written work from Barrow people on their relationship with recorded music throughout their lives - Β via radio, records and record shops, pub jukeboxes, mix tapes, playlists, studios, clubs, downloads, and in the background noise of our day to day.

The pieces draw on our personal and shared associations with music, its role as a soundtrack to friendship, as an aid to memory, as an agent of identity and development, and as a source of comfort and connection. They describe the place music carves out in our sonic environment and the way it gets into us, and the places it reaches.

It isn't all pleasure; the tone shifts from the elegiac to the combative; from the intimate and contemplative to the expansive and angry. There are shared reference points, recurring figures and places, we move from the joyous affirmation of the dance floor to the chill of vulnerability and isolation.
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But above all there is affection and generosity here, for songs, sounds, people and places, even for institutions. Through it all runs a consensus on the need for empathy and community, and on the ability of music to nurture them, to light our public and private spaces and to deny their darkest corners any power.

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