Programme Notes Axon (2011) - Composed by Richard Graham and Michael Andrews "Axon" is a collaborative project that began life as a series of recorded guitar improvisations. These initial recordings provide the main source materials in the fixed media element of the piece. The guitar and tape are in a continual loop of mutual influence with the line between the composer and the performer becoming continually blurred, resulting in a truly collaborative piece that follows a combined creative vision. This piece was composed at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast, in 2011.  Excerpts from Disrupt/Construct (2017) - Composed by Richard Graham “Memory is malleable. Whether intentionally or otherwise, human beings have a tendency to misremember parts of their personal histories. Misremembering may provide the means to manage a troubled past—a method of self-preservation—an escape from prior traumatic events. Accepted personal narratives may not necessarily be representative of the truth even though they may be based on factually accurate information or what an actor may presume to be the case." These excerpts are derived from a developing composition, “Disrupt/Construct” (2017), featuring electric guitar and live electronics. This piece is a point of reflection on two ostensibly divergent sound worlds that have emerged through a solo instrumental practice over a ten year period. Certain excerpts will present a more ‘accessible’ or parse able sonic world with defined pulses and tonal systems. Others are situated more within the realm of noise, ambient, and drone music, disrupting the continuity of the preceding pieces. While both sound worlds exhibit their own divergent attributes, both reach across the aisle and borrow from one another.   Quiet Arcs (2012) - Composed by Richard Graham "Quiet Arcs" is a live performance and fixed media piece for electric guitar and multichannel loudspeaker array. The piece explores the notion of a dynamic pitch space and the bodily metaphors which underpin it. The guitarist's melodic and timbral choices are analyzed, scaled, and mapped in real-time to determine the spatial position and timbral shape of the multichannel live source relative to the accompanying drone-based tape part. The real-time instrumentation is largely improvised with the fixed media element providing a series of morphing pedal points as a basis for the improvisation.