Darrin Martin combines sounds derived from various metal objects—steel tongue drums, a singing bowl, and the scraping of thick wires—with breath as synthesized through musicians’ effect devices and an old toy squeezebox accordion. Exploring the space between melodic harmony and percussive disruption, Steel Tongue Accordion Ears is a meditation on auditory tensions and rhythmic interactions. The composition joins sound fragments from the built and natural world, such as the pounding of piano keys, intermittent typewriting, cooing doves, and a trickling stream. It highlights the inseparability between soundscape and landscape in urban environments. As a person with congenital and operational hearing loss and tinnitus, Martin’s work often addresses the sensorial interdependencies that arise from non-normative ways of hearing.

He invites you to pay attention to your breath in relation to the audible elements: attune to the compression and expansion of your belly, like the way an accordion is played—does it shallow and quicken in concert with the sounds? What textures do you sense from his instruments and how do they enter your body?

Download an audio transcription here.

Steel Tongue Accordion Ears plays during daylight hours only, from one hour after dawn to one hour before dusk. It is periodically shut off in response to seasonal ecological activity, determined in consultation with faculty in the Department of Biology. See the Blackwood website for current playback conditions.