euphoria

(2024)

For Electronics – audio track

Composed and mixed by Gabrielle Dalsan

Premiered at The Royal College of Music

for a the concert ‘Sounds of Protest’ - 2024

‘Euphoria’ embodies the conflict between the loving conscious and the fearful unconscious (the difference between the awakened self, and the mind which is still in slumber, vulnerable to being pulled along by fear and desire). Our true self hides behind the thick wall of our minds which manage to fill every moment, preventing us from being in our true responsive nature to everything around us, everything that is life, love and nature. The mind is fuelled daily, and restrains us from connecting with other souls, bodies and life itself.

In writing the piece, I watched archived footage and interviews regarding the matters of mental health and societal issues. I sampled the voices that resonated the most with my work - rich and intense voices. I combined these samples with recordings of my own breathing - to resemble many of our efforts to stay afloat, breathe, and the inevitability of being dragged down, once again, by our own suffering and conflict. The breathing also connects each voice to one single being.

I love to sample the speaking voice. It’s real and provoked, loaded with emotion and honesty. Unlike singing, the speaking and breathing voice is not concerned with reaching specific notes or melodic lines, but more-so with delivering a firm, direct message. It’s this message that captivates me. I wrapped the music in the sound of a tightening rope, and chains that repeatedly drag the person to the psychic underground. Sometimes, it is a dragging that is needed to fully wake up.

In order to truly know the self and reside in a state of ever constant stillness, we must strengthen our tools to fend off the fear around us, the opinions, media, hate, loudness without any meaning - noise for the sake of creating noise - and simply sit in that which ‘just is’, and to find the ultimate reality of life at the core, which is love.