Roger DOYLE (b. 1949)
Time Machine
Chalant [9:15]
Voices Of Parents [5:14]
Back In Time [4:12]
Jonathan Prelude [2:21]
Coat-hanger Kisses [9:48]
Wassane [10:27]
Back From Hospital [2:33]
It’s Very Serious [3:09]
Salomé At The Gate [10:14]
Birth [3:55]
Departure [10:37]
rec. 2010/11
HERESY RECORDS 017 [72:00]
Irish composer Roger Doyle has not as high profile a name
as he might have, considering his not inconsiderable reputation and
output. Starting out as a drummer, he studied composition at the Royal
Irish Academy of Music and also attended the Institute for Sonology
when it was still in Utrecht – it has since moved to The Hague.
Work for film and theatre, a mammoth magnum opus Babel and
numerous albums provide plenty of material for further investigation.
The golden thread behind Time Machine is a series of messages
left on a telephone answering machine, but the pieces are also “linked
by recurring themes and chord progressions”, giving the whole
thing a sense of unity and direction. The messages were collected between
1987 and 1989, and there is an inevitable poignancy in the fact that
many of the people who left their mark in this way are no longer with
us.
The opening track acts as an introduction. Chalant draws us
in with the attractive sonorities of a dulcimer type of instrument,
the cyclic ostinato of which develops into something with drums and
ticking, moving towards a section with low and moody chords into which
fragments of voice messages emerge and recede. This is elongated through
a development of the bass notes into a gently syncopated bed of sound,
through which the stage is set and the curtains can slowly rise. The
blackness of the stage is penetrated by the opening piano notes of Voices
of Parents. The piano is deliberately of the antique upright variety.
The composer’s parents, Paddy and Gwen Doyle, are wishing him
a happy New Year with the usual concerned comments about his well-being.
The spotlight, searching through the misty aura of a lost past, finds
the composer’s son aged 10 and 11 in Back In Time. Gentle
chords see-saw onwards, the colour and timbre now conjuring something
like a starry sky from which the younger voice descends.
Jonathan Prelude is an instrumental preamble to Coat-Hanger
Kisses in which the late broadcaster and journalist Jonathan Philbin
Bowman improvises a poetic “stream of consciousness message”,
some of the words from which are printed in the booklet. The spotlight
has returned to the pub piano, but the music takes on a relaxed lyricism
which also has an improvisatory air to it. This gains substance and
weight later on in what is quite a substantial and moving piece. Wassane
picks up on the dulcimer sound and ostinato energy of the opening track,
its shifting accents lifting attention away from a strong downbeat that
expands with a minimalist and single-minded power.
The mood retreats for Back From Hospital, the messages from
a variety of people expressing concern after a serious asthma attack
saw Doyle hospitalised. Sprinkled with sprightly notes this track has
the feel of an intermezzo, the driving beat of It’s Very Serious
taking us into a darker place. The strange messages at the root of this
track turned out to be prank calls, but were disturbing at the time
as one can imagine. Salomé at the Gate uses messages left the
morning after the first night of a production of Oscar Wilde’s
Salomé for which Doyle had made a substantial musical contribution.
A review is read out and there are other discussions and comments, including
from the director Steven Berkoff, as the music weaves a commentary of
its own.
Birth describes the tender and magical moment of becoming a
grandfather – the messages a computer generated tracking of the
event – a sequence of electronic telegrams that are strangely
affecting. Departure is the instrumental counterweight to Chalant,
a more reflective finale that carries the memories of what we have taken
from the rest of the programme. Electronic treatment adds texture, and
bell-like sounds take over at the close, the surreal side-effects of
resonance playing their part in giving a vocal quality to the notes.
This is a remarkable release, the content of which is likely to haunt
your thoughts long after you have experienced it. We’ve all had
some experience of recorded voice messages, though in these digital
times few of them are likely to be preserved in the way we used to with
those old-fashioned cassette tapes. Time adds significance to such artifacts,
and this is where part of the strength of these pieces comes from, the
rest filled in by Roger Doyle’s expressive music. The lovely Irish
accents are another part of the attraction here. If you are looking
for something theatrical and contemporary that doesn’t bamboozle
you with avant-garde angularity or batter you with tediously heavy dance
rhythms then Time Machine is a wonderful place to explore.
Dominy Clements
