about the record

A box of old photographic slides, uncovered at a house clearance center with a £5 asking price. On the slides: a collection of shots from the ’60s–’70s—British rural life, various trips around Europe, and a visit to the US. The lives of Bill, Jean, and Edith (and Pippi the budgerigar). The relationship between the three is unclear, but they seem to live together—or at least spend a lot of time together. They seem close. They like to travel and garden.

What became of these people? Presumably, they have since passed away, given their apparent ages in the pictures and the dates scrawled on the slides and boxes. What happened? How did these slides come to be here? Were there no family or friends who wanted to claim them?

At first, the discovery feels uncomfortable, intrusive—upsetting, even. The lives of these people—whoever they were—were lovingly recorded, only for the documentation to be found decades later in a musty, tattered box, buried among other people’s discarded belongings. It feels sad. It prompts reflections on the transient and the ephemeral. It feels inescapable that—regardless of intention—this becomes, in some way, a commentary on the value of a life. On the value of Bill, Jean, and Edith’s (and Pippi’s) lives.

But studying the slides in more detail, it’s clear that the three subjects shared many happy times and experiences. They are always smiling, and there appears to be a genuine sense of camaraderie and affection between them. A passion for photography, too.

So should we be sad that these lives seem forgotten—that £5 is the asking price for the physical documentation of years of adventure? Or satisfied that the imagery represents lives happily lived and shared? The value of these physical items—the slides themselves—is not equal to the value of the actual lived experiences of the subjects or the quiet lesson Bill, Jean, Edith (and Pippi) offer.

Realizing this offers an invitation to recognize a simple truth: the value of a life lies in how it is lived, in the moment. Exist and enjoy it—if you can—because in the face of impermanence, that’s all we can really do. In the moment, neither the beginning nor the end truly exist.

Petteril, the musical project of James Gilbert, has been creating audio collages and improvisations with these concepts in mind. The music is not so much about the slides or the people in them—although both the imagery and the sound evoke a kind of nostalgia—but about the philosophical questions that emerged. Improvisation, using various physical, analog, and digital instruments, is central to the theme of being present. Generative elements further express that transience: the fleeting nature of moments coming and going, flowing from one to the next.

These evolving beds of sound, improvisations, tape loops, field recordings, and more are chopped, layered, and processed—then layered and processed again.