"Dewdrop Reflection" - Squash & Biscuit 《露水反射》瓜和饼干
Originally performed for CalArts' ESP Night, Spring 2021.
Squash & Biscuit「瓜和饼干」 is Shuwen Zhao and Brian Griffith
This is a piece based on mahjong. The tiles provide the score for each performer. They can be arranged in any order, however, the goal is still to have a winning hand. Each round, the performers play through the tiles by triggering samples which are grouped into sample banks that correlate to the tiles.
The sounds are small edits from field recordings taken from Chinatown and Highland Park in Los Angeles, as well as our own voices reciting the different Mahjong tile names. We also composed 28 short loops using various synths and percussion samples. All of these sounds were loaded into a Norns, by monome, running Timber Player script and we used a Grid to trigger the sounds.