Telescopic Murmur - Vox Liminis

Crime and subsequently the justice system are topics that are somewhat taboo amongst the general public, in that when a person is seen as an ex-convict or has spent time in prison, they are often still viewed as overly negative by the rest of society and even those in charge of the judicial system itself. The time someone has spent in jail can massively vary depending on which of a vast amount of crimes they have committed; the worst are often always perceived as the worst and for good reason, but something such as petty theft is still also seen as "just as bad" as the worst crime commitable simply due to the fact the offernder has spent time involved with the justice system.

As well as this, the justice system is also portrayed as 'doing its job efficiently' however there are many accounts of the system leading to nothing more than misery and further chagrin for people who seek rehabilitation for the offence they have committed, often leading to them having no such rehabilitation and leading to more dismissal from society.

This is the premise for a creative project I worked on with a group of fellow colleagues, including Amar Chhina, Daniel Beattie, and Jamie MacPherson; the premise of this project was to creatively reinforce the ideologiess set up by the site Vox Liminis and the Distant Voices project that support rehabilitation for convicts for easier transition back into society. What we could respond with was entirely up to us, however it had to align with the beliefs of Vox Liminis and their ideology of criminal rehabilitation.

This proved to be tricky at first, as this is a subject I am not too versed in but also on the fence about, as I feel that some convicts do deserve a chance to go through criminal rehab in order to better fit back into society once again, however criminals of more serious crimes should not be rehabilitated. This goes against what Vox Liminis stands for, as they believe all criminals should go through rehabilitation, even those who have committed the worst crimes.

However, we as a group managed to create a creative response to the premise by producing a 2-track EP called 'Telescopic Murmur', named as an alternative to Distant Voices, the Vox Liminis project at hand. As Amar was a lyricist and rapper, we decided it'd be best to create two tracks that helped focus in on the perspective of Vox Liminis through pieces that were in the mind of someone who has spent time as a convict.

Task distribution was set as Daniel and I working on composing and mixing our respective tracks, Amar who performed and wrote the lyrics to both tracks, and Jamie who tackled the recording and mastering of the project as well as website creation. Compared to the previous project, this was much more managable, as everyone had time free on their schedule to commit to the project and task distribution was much more cleaner and fairly dealt out.

To begin, Daniel and I both got to work on creating tracks for Amar to compose lyrics to; I have had limited experience working with rap/hip-hop music, and as a result I'm not massively adept at making something that could be considered fitting for the genre, however I decided to add my own flair and knowledge of the genre with musical knowledge of my own to create a track that borders on industrial, rock, and rap genres. The beat was "drunk", a stylistic choice in that the verses would appear almost out of time but the choruses would tighten up and be more gelled together.

This drunken beat idea can be attributed to drummers such as Questlove and Anderson .Paak, who all play simple beats but offset kick and backbeat notes ever-so-slightly in order to add an element of off-beat drunken swing to a track's rhythm. For my track, I wanted to have the verse drums performing in 4/4 with the hi-hats playing in triplets rather than straight quarter note hits. Kicks were also off-centred slightly to add this more dazed feel to the drums, while the snares were rigid on beats 2 and 4 of the rhythms, in order for their to be a cohesive grounding to the rhythm and so it did not stray too far away from the 'simple' 4/4 beat.

Amar initially struggled to write lyrics to this beat as it was a beat he wasn't used to writing in; as a result, I simplified the beat for when Amar was creating the lyrics to a regular 4/4 drum pattern with no off-centred or shifted elements, and added these back in later once the vocal take was done.

I added in a synth to provide the main chords for the track, with the key signature being F minor (Dorian if you consider the Bb Major instead of Bb minor chord); I then later added a lead synth for the chorus melody and recording guitar and bass parts to give the more rock-inspired elements to the track, making it somewhat an industrial rap rock song.

Daniel's track was much more mellow and in line with traditional modern hip-hop/rap tracks of the current decade, which meant there was a nice contrast between the two, as if to show two differing emotions or feelings regarding the topic of criminal rehabilitation.

We recorded Amar in Control Room 1 at the UWS Ayr Campus, with Jamie taking over recording duties and later mastering duties. As Daniel's track and mine were mostly covered at home, we had done most of the mixing processes already and simply needed to wait for Amar's vocals to be tracked; we used a Shure SM58 for the vocals and got several vocal takes we later merged together to get the resulting vocal comp.

After the tracks were mixed, Jamie mastered them and began working on the website, covering the Distant Voices project as well as promoting our work, which would be released at a later date and hosted alongside other Vox Liminis projects in the future.

As there was no massive release like with the COP26 Glas-Go Green project, the Telescopic Murmur EP was a very investing project as it allowed us as a group, and myself as a person, to tackle a premise that we have very limited experience with or expertise in; as a result, it allowed us to creatively respond in a way we understand best with the resources available to us, which allowed us to create something new and something that challenges our beliefs as well as giving us new ideas for how we could respond to other briefs in the future.

I look forward to working with my colleagues again in the future and also wish to tackle similar premises like this again, to see what else I could create with my colleagues.