| 1 | 29.4.26 | 26:12 |
A deeply atmospheric set from multifaceted Irish artist, Vivienne Griffin, accompanied by cellist Oona Lowther and recorded as part of a bill co-curated with Nyahh Records at OTO in April 2026.
From the coiling smoke of the mirrored incense burners on the cover (an image adapted from a sculpture created by Griffin themselves) the tone is immediately set for something ritualistic, and the scrape-struck clusters of clarsach harp notes that begin the recording seem to lean into this feeling of a rite being initiated. The lines between ancient ritual and modern realities are instantly blurred however, by the fact that these notes are in fact coming from a purpose-built, self-playing harp, with a 3D-printed metal motorised armature drawing sounds from the instrument.
This shifting between ancient and modern - myth and technology - is something something that Griffin builds on to thrilling effect. Shortly after the initial harp notes are established, a heavily distorted kick drum booms into life - seeming to not so much hit the listener's chest as somehow erupt from inside it - and it is clear that we're immersed in a very special sound world indeed.
Soon the harp settles into an insistent pulse and Oona Lowther's languorous cello notes rise up to meet it, providing the water for Griffin's seeking, questing vocals to sail across. All the while that jagged kick drum thrums and thuds, never letting anything quite settle, pushing everything ever onwards. This sense of restless momentum never flags across the set's 26 minutes, with Griffin constantly changing and mutating each new sound as if constantly seeking something that always remains tantalisingly just ahead. Cello notes snag and distort, biting tones dart and flicker, until the whole assemblage seems to spiral in on itself. We are left back with the single, unadorned notes of that mechanised harp, but we are not where we started out.
As Griffin sings in the stark, haunting middle section, "nothing was ever meant to be this way". We live in an imperfect world, yet by immersing ourselves within it as openly and honestly as is apparent here, we may still emerge with something precious.
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Recorded by Billy Steiger
Mixed and mastered by Oli Barrett
Griffin’s practice spans time-based and site-specific works, sculpture, drawing, and experimental sound. Their work ranges in form, from an augmented self-playing harp and a video work created within a virtual world to a long-running series of black-ink drawings. Moving between ancient technologies and emerging media, Griffin frequently shifts materials and modes as part of their practice.
Oona completed both her BMus (Hons) and MA as a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music under Josephine Knight. She was awarded a Diploma (DipRAM) with her Masters graduation. She works with many of London’s leading, Contemporary musicians as both a soloist and chamber musician. As an Art Mentor Lucerne Scholar with the Riot Ensemble, Oona had the opportunity to perform with them as a soloist, playing the world premiere of Alex Papp’s ‘Deformed Images’, a Duo Concerto for Piano and Cello, recorded and later played on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show. Other work she has done with the Riot Ensemble includes their performance of pieces inspired and written in the style of the ‘Fluxus' Movement, and she looks forward to collaborating with them once again in May 2026 in a project of new commissions for acoustic instruments and electronics of Spatial Sound.
In 2024 Oona was a Southbank Future Artist in a Young Artist Programme with the Manchester Collective, enjoying her debut at Southbank’s Purcell Room. With a keen interest in arrangement, she performed her own composition for cello and electronics, based on Hildegard Von Bingen’s meditative and ambient music, fuelling her passion to bring the past into the present day.
She is a founding member of the New Music Ensemble, ’Flux Ensemble’, with composer and longtime time collaborator Alex Papp.
