Space Is The Place with Roly Porter

Music

Roly Porter has been pushing the boundaries of deep, dark electronic sound for many years now; previously as a member of industrial dubstep duo Vex’d and, since 2011, through his immersive solo efforts.

Cutting his teeth alongside fellow producer Kuedo during the most fertile years of dubstep, Vex’d released records on the likes of Planet Mu and Subtext, the latter of which would become a home for his first solo pursuits. Afterlife came in 2011 and then Life Cycle followed two years later, both exhibiting Roly’s evolution as a producer, moving into dense, abstract soundscapes and contemporary classical composition.

He’s now gearing up for the release of his third album on the label, Kistvaen, which was originally developed for an AV performance of the same name with visual artist MFO, and was performed at Unsound, Berlin Atonal and Sonic Acts.

Ahead of the release, he shares some of his favourite spaced-out selections, in both film and music…

Buy HERE. Photo credit: Lucy Dickins.

LISTEN

Paul Jebanasam - Eidolons Beginning

It is a great privilege to work alongside people who challenge and inspire you and that is very true of Paul, who is a constant source of both technical challenge and inspiration. The AV show for this piece with Tarik Barri at Atonal put me in a very strange mood, something I haven’t felt before, where it felt like scale had been reversed, or that’s not it, but something in the perception of the very small and very large was affected. And the texture of the film and music were perfectly in tune.

Paul Jebanasam - Eidolons Beginning

It is a great privilege to work alongside people who challenge and inspire you and that is very true of Paul, who is a constant source of both technical challenge and inspiration. The AV show for this piece with Tarik Barri at Atonal put me in a very strange mood, something I haven’t felt before, where it felt like scale had been reversed, or that’s not it, but something in the perception of the very small and very large was affected. And the texture of the film and music were perfectly in tune.
2001: A Space Odyssey - The Monolith On The Moon

The ideas from this film and book continue to influence or underpin almost everything I do in some way. An incredible piece of imagination and as a combination of sound and film, incredible.
Philip Glass - Mad Rush

Weightless, a sense of falling through space and the most beautiful melancholy. I often try to freeze moments in music that I like, find some way to stay in the bits that match your mood, but this piece does it naturally on it’s own, it hangs in one state and it’s incredible.
Black Hole Scene - Interstellar

This film has some pretty bizarre moments and the ending is horrible, but the experience of seeing it at the imax was one of the most overwhelming audio visual experiences I have had. Deafeningly loud, on a screen so wide you can’t see the edges with incredible sound design. And organs.
Dj Krust - Future Unknown

An unbeatable combination of the sharpest sound design, coldest bass and drums and sweeping epic emotion. For me this is both the peak and in a way the conclusion of an incredible period in music. The weight, strangeness, futurism and emotion of this track have been overwhelming me for years.
Riding Light - Traversing The Solar System At The Speed Of Light

When I was about ten there was a series on Radio 3 or similar about Steve Reich that my Mum would listen to on the drive to school. My brother and I would play the Steve Reich game which involved hitting the back of the chairs in the car with sticks and saying “dadada tatatatata” endlessly which probably drove her fucking crazy, but I’ve loved this music ever since. Combining it with this strange visualisation of how incredibly big space is and how disappointingly slow light speed is and I could watch it forever, why stop at Jupiter. Even our nearest star at this speed is unimaginably far away.
Spem In Alium (Thomas Tallis) - Tallis Scholars

I expect it is another leftover of the impact of 2001 in my life that I equate some choral music with drifting in space, but for me this is one of the most futuristic and transportive pieces of music. I can’t describe it in words, but any philosophical or spiritual questions or problems I have are momentarily answered by this, it is music on an infinite scale.
Mozart - Lacrimosa.

Some interesting stories about the composition of this music, but all that matters is that it is totally heartbreaking. There might be other life near enough in the universe for us to meet, possibly not, but listening to this against the thought of our tiny planet, microscopic and surrounded by freezing blackness, as though it is the funeral song of our species.