Portamento is a London based Electronic Musician and Visual Artist, who this week releases his latest Audio/Visual piece based on his hometown New Brighton, Wirral.
The work is reflective of how the 2020 global pandemic has changed New Brighton and how moving back to his hometown, Portamento found inspiration with a renewed love for the area. The A/V work also named ‘New Brighton’ offers a lens through which the desolate and serene landscape has presented itself over the last 3 months during the lockdown. The film features footage from dusk through to dawn, with the fluctuating Mersey tide broken up by its dystopian like empty beach, streets and surroundings. All of this footage is underpinned with an original score from Portamento featuring stirring sea-like
Synthesizer sounds supported by field recordings of the ambient Mersey waves and sounds.
The soundtrack to New Brighton is enhanced by the use of Binaural recording and production techniques, making full use of the audio.
spacial field. Binaural audio is a 3D sound format for headphones, where sound sources are spatialised simulating a 360° sphere around the listener. Sounds can not only be perceived left or right like in traditional stereo, but from above, below, front, back, and every possible angle.
Best enjoyed with headphones on!
More from this artist here:
3 Comments
Not overly impressed with the video edits. Seemingly he purposely searched out the ugly elements from the get go. The graffiti, which in reality is few and far between in the town. The ramshackle, ugly lifeboat station on the periphery of the town, as opposed to showing the more ‘attractive’ main one at the heart of the area, didn’t fit with the ‘grim’ angle? You can highlight a locale under lock down without evidently trying to make it look worse than it actually was.
What a load of shite. I live in New Brighton and have been out every single day – morning, noon and night throughout the pandemic. To say that this “work is reflective of how the 2020 global pandemic has changed New Brighton” completely misrepresents what has been happening here since the start of the pandemic. To say that he has a “renewed love for the area” is a complete falsehood. He has picrured only parts which show a “desolate and serene landscape (which) has presented itself over the last 3 months during the lockdown”. New Brighton is much more than his very peculiar view. As a person who knows the area intimately, I can truthfully say that his “moving back to his hometown” has not worked. His head is probably where his arse is if he jonestly believes that this work represents his hometown.
I live in New Brighton. I left criticism of this piece last night. I felt that it gave a very unfair picture of New Brighton. It simply displays a narrative which is untrue. The critique was displayed but said that it needed to be moderated. Fair enough. BUT….. It has now disappeared. This “artist” obviously does not like his “work” to be criticised. I am sure if I had left a glowing review it would not have “disappeared”. This “artist” is, then, basically a coward and a fraudster.