Peter Batchelor

British composer Peter Batchelor, who specializes in large-scale multi-channel installations, assembled on Kaleidoscope (Pogus, 2014) electroacoustic music originally "composed for an eight-channel listening environment, the speakers arranged equally in a circle surrounding the audience" in which, in other words, one would be perceived the same regardless of one's location in the room. Fissure (2006) is a study of noises that are either catastrophic (like cracking) or grating (like grinding), but the result is an almost liquid leitmotiv, , a sequence of gurgling, cascading, flushing sounds except that it dead-ends into a cosmic black hole. Nebula (2012) is built around a periodical rising tide of buzzing drones, a tsunami that continuously disintegrates and rebuilds and that ends in a lacerating drone. Pulse (2013) is machine music and relatively old-fashioned concrete music. Fuse (2013) evokes the sense of a haunted rain forest with its eerie breezes and ghostly whistles. Arcade (2004) is a tribute of sorts to pinball arcade games, but it ends up sounding also like the soundtrack to a neurotic stream of consciousness, or like the existential crisis of a robot. These pieces are most than sketches, and, in fact, have the substance and the depth of mini-concertos.