Lisa Busby
Lisa Busby
Lisa Busby is a Scottish composer, vocalist and improviser who produces experimental music, performance art and pop song. She is one of ‘Sound and Music’s New Voice 2019’ and participates in the social acoustics research project. She also collaborates with many bands and art instillation projects.
Here are a few pieces of Lisas work which she shared and talked to us about. I will be describing the aim and process behind each piece and offering my own critical response.
The swim is a 8 track album made by various artists including Lisa. It was made in 2018 on the Faroh islands which landscape and material limitations (lack of instruments available on the island) inspired the album. Lisa showed us a song from the album called ‘The Swim’ which uses a mixture of sounds and musical instruments to create a thick, textural landscape.
The piece uses industrial noises such as a robotic press and a whirring drill which resembles a cluster of high strings. These noses are paired with a cello playing dissonant intervals in both its highest and lowest registers. This combination of sound creates a unsettling and atonal sound texture which I enjoyed listening to.