As David sent me the sounds and conversations of the voyage, I started to hear them all as parts of a musical structure. There’s the ship’s engine, tuned around a Db, a constant presence that surely fades to the back of everyone’s mind but is nevertheless always there. Like the sea, and also like the tonal centre of a piece of music, felt rather than “heard”. Perhaps layering this and other sounds from the ship could form some kind of “mechanical chorale”?

The interviews and conversations themselves start to take on musical contours too, especially if the meaning of the words is unclear to me (I hope to rectify this soon with some more research!). Sometimes it’s a discussion, other times perhaps a sequence of numbers read aloud. Numbers are always interesting to musicians, a way to structure and mould the sounds. A sentence is a melody, a voice an instrument.

The sounds of the communications between the sensors and the ship’s take on similar, more synthetic rhythms. The ship, its crew and the equipment are becoming, in my head at least, members of a bizarre and fantastic orchestra.

Then there are the fascinating commentaries of the crew members, the glue that holds this alien soundworld together…

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