Ghostly Variations

Abstract

The philosophical ideas of hauntology that grew from the seeds sown in Specters of Marx have often focused upon a deep sense of loss, or a profound nostalgia for societal futures that—with the seeming defeat of Marxist ideologies at the tail-end of the 1980s and early 1990s—would now never materialise. These same sentiments frequently inhabit the often brilliantly insightful hauntological cultural writings of Mark Fisher (1968–2017). The space of this essay will allow me the opportunity to offer some reflections upon several fundamental considerations and motivations of my compositional practice—in short, those that focus upon historiological and territorial associative investigations and explorations. At least since the year 2000, I have treated the act of creating a musical work as palimpsestic; this is true whether relating to an acoustic or electronic work or one that is a mixture of the two. My works, at least over the last 25 years or so, result in layered sonic hauntings that link our present with the past.