Conversation

Perth-based composer Alan Lamb makes music from the resonance of wires.

At the age of 5, he remembers his nanny putting her ear to the telephone poles to "hear the sound the world made". Later he had a recurring dream, in which the sound of a sustained major sixth emanated from a train which descended distant hills and then ran through the air above where he was standing.

Pursuing these memories, in 1974 he constructed devices to amplify the upper harmonics of nylon and catgut threads. Later he got the idea of using wires suspended in magnetic fields and of 'strumming' them using pulsed electric currents. The device produced interesting sounds - but he was not yet satisfied.

One night in the summer of 1975, during a holiday in Scotland, he pulled to the roadside to sleep in his in his van. Later he was awoken by the sound of another major sixth - but this time it was not a dream. He had stopped beside telephone wires which sang throughout the night, the sound waxing and waning with the wind! Hearing the wires sing, Lamb felt emotionally transported and became determined to record their music.

Later he returned to Australia to pursue postgraduate research into neurobiology. As his progressed, he continued to feel deeply frustrated in his attempts to record the music of wires.

A breakthrough occurred in 1976 when he visited the Great Southern Region of Western Australia. He found a half-mile stretch of abandoned telephone wires... all singing softly in the wind. Lamb was able to buy them for just $10 - and thus began his musical career.

He's now considered one of the founders of "dark ambient" music.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnlNbb8eric