We spoke to composer and polymath Dominic Murcott about birdsong, lockdown recipes and his new release 1:3:5:7 Improvised Duos.
What has been your experience of lock down life so far?
As soon as it started I was very businesslike and pragmatic, both with work and family, but rapidly became unpleasantly anxious and depressed. I’m gradually emerging from that phase and am now finding a daily rhythm to lockdown life. Essentially lots of exercise and healthy food. I’ve gone off alcohol for the moment which is probably a good thing.
Is there anything in particular helping you get through the week?
I limited myself to a single reading of The Guardian online every morning, then no more news for the day. After that it’s been a mixture of Better Call Saul, Brooklyn Nine Nine, art films on MUBI and reruns of classic football matches. I’m also getting into Deutschland 83 – I was 18 when it is set and was touring Germany myself about four years later. I’m also enjoying reading Dissolution by C. J. Sansom. I’ve a continual love of making things: it began with model airplanes as a kid and now I build Eurorack synth cases and modules.
How has social distancing and lock down affected your ways of listening? Are there sounds you're missing, or are you hearing things you wouldn’t otherwise?
As soon as lockdown started I found myself far more drawn to the birdsong behind my house in SE London than to music. The increase in bird activity seems to be corresponding to the decrease in city noise and when I have felt low it’s the only sound that I can really relate to.
Postcard from home
Imagining an escape – 7.30am 11th April 2020
I live on a dirty street in New Cross Gate. Litter, fly tipping, human and animal waste of every kind. However, I am lucky enough to have a garden that is surrounded by other gardens. Despite being 100 meters from a busy main road, the song of the great tit and the neighbour’s water feature dominate the soundscape and I can pretend I have escaped to the country.
What’s been the best meal you’ve cooked in self-isolation, and the worst?
I’m not always able to make good music, but I am always able to cook really good food. A bit of an obsession. Best meal – pizzas with wild garlic pesto cooked in my portable Ooni. Worst meal – classic roast beef for Easter Sunday, the food was great (a forerib of Aberdeen Angus bought direct from the farm run by Marcus Vergette – the sculptor who built The Harmonic Canon) but I was just too depressed to enjoy it.
Recipe: New Cross Tarka Dhal
I’ve been perfecting this over many years and it is now a firm favourite in our family. Our neighbours have a bay tree which is a great help! If you buy the ingredients in larger quantities (for example Natco packets of spices) then each meal probably costs about £2-3 in ingredients and serves 2.
Ingredients
200g yellow split peas (also called chana dal)
160g basmati rice (buy the best – Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Aged Basmati is hard to beat)
1 hot fresh chili sliced finely (tip – buy chilies from an Asian supermarket and freeze them whole – cheap and last for ever)
5 cloves garlic sliced
2-3 bay leaves – fresh if you can find them
powdered turmeric (also called haldi)
salt – large crystals like Malden Sea Salt
black mustard seeds
whole cumin seeds
green cardamom pods
whole star anise
whole cloves
cinnamon sticks
oil for the tarka (cold pressed rapeseed is great – best qaulity and cheapest from Aldi)
fresh coriander
Method
Rinse the split peas then put into a lidded pan with twice the amount of water. Add bay leaves, a teaspoon of turmeric and a good pinch of salt, then bring to the boil, turn down and simmer. When the peas are soft, but still have a little bite, about 40 minutes, partially mash with a potato masher. You might need to add more water as you want something thicker than soup but still a bit runny.
While the peas are cooking, rinse the rice then add it to another lidded pan with equal volume of water and rice. Add a star anise, a couple of cardamom pods, a few cloves and a cinnamon stick then cook slowly without removing the lid. When the water has been absorbed the rice is done.
The tarka is essentially a flavoured oil that is poured onto the dhal. Heat about four tablespoons of oil is a small frying pan. While it is heating serve the rice and dhal. Put ½ teaspoon of black mustard seeds into the oil. If it is hot enough they will immediately begin to pop. Add the sliced garlic and chili and fry for about a minute or until the garlic starts to go deep brown. Throw in a pinch of cumin seeds and a big pinch of salt then pour the oil over the dhal, decorate with a handful of coriander leaves and serve.
Just Released
1:3:5:7 Improvised Duos is the new digital release from Dominic Murcott. Created over four brief recording sessions with four superb improvisers – trumpeter Laura Jurd, saxophonist Tom Challenger, pianist Hans Koller and violinist Joe Townsend – the music blends gamelan-esque percussion, jazz squall and open-eared adventure. Each piece is either 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes or 7 minutes long, with an improvised approach.
"The idea behind it was a simple question," says Dominic, "if we know exactly how long the section is going to be, will it influence the material in each? For example, is the first gesture of a 3' improvisation different to that of a 7' one? Each of the collaborators has a very particular style and I adapted to each by limiting the percussion I could use for each one. For intimacy I engineered the sessions myself so only two of us where ever in the studio at any given time."
Youtube Playlist: Tunes from Home
As Head of Composition at Trinity Laban, Dominic Murcott invites staff, students and alumni to share sounds from their own homes. An opportunity for the gentle and experimental, check out the resulting video playlist.
Dominic’s British Composer Award-winning workThe Harmonic Canon was released with Nonclassical in 2019. Performed by arx duo and written in two halves of exactly 21 minutes, The Harmonic Canon uses a specially designed half-tonne double bell made by sculptor Marcus Vergette – see it in action here.
We celebrated the release of The Harmonic Canon Remixes with an immersive event at Stephen Lawrence Gallery – read on for highlights from the night.