about the record

Drones In The Air documents Andrew’s first experiments with intuitive just intonation. Forgoing the synths and magnetic heads of his TLO work, he turns instead to a minimal setup of oscillators, a Lyra-8, and a handful of pedals, maintaining a precise focus on the creation of microtonal spectra.

Across four austere, slow-moving parts, harmonic textures are built from the clashing frequencies of the oscillators, revealing overtones that veer from the ominous to the cacophonous. The results sit adjacent to Glenn Branca’s microtonal workouts, imagining how they might sound if realized through oscillators rather than guitars. The pure tones of the oscillators provide the building blocks for audio alchemy to occur, with simple sine waves transmuted into spectral harmonics and air-bending, oblique noise sculpture.

Andrew Hargreaves shares:

“This album is a confluence of various interest that have coalesced to form Drones In The Air. These are my first experiments using just intonation, more intuitive intonation in all honesty, colliding frequencies from the oscillators to create beating movements and rich overtones.

Using broadcast test equipment to create this work made me think of all the radio frequencies floating all around us and where these signal originated from. This lead me to think of amateur broadcasts and how this has changed with the advent of video sharing and social media, and how private home videos from the past are now available for an unintended audience. The album as a whole is inspired by my continued fascination with the work of Glenn Branca, who has been an influence on my practice since my teenage years.”