Drummer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Ross Turner introduces his new album In The Echo, an eight-track concept compilation album recorded in various locations in the historic National Concert Hall building in Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin – ranging from old lecture theatres, to dis-used stairwells, to a former morgue – and featuring collaborations between Irish musicians across an athletic span of musical traditions, from Lisa O'Neill, Crash Ensemble and Colm Mac Con Iomaire to Bell X1's Paul Noonan and Villagers' Conor O’Brien.
In the Echo was recorded between 2014 – 2016, a time in which I was a resident in the National Concert Hall. It was a unique opportunity to work within the building and my hope was to document that time in manner that included the building somehow. I always thought of the project as a love letter to the building.
Understanding that I had unique access to the space I was keen to include others in the process so I invited the artist's on the album to explore the space with me. As a drummer I wasn’t quite convinced I could record something worth hearing on my own, it made much more sense to have some of the greatest musicians in the country do what they do.
One of my favourite elements of the building is the way it sounds, the combination of expansive marble halls, wooden floored rooms and stone stairwells. The spaces around the building were activated daily by the variety of musicians performing, rehearsing and going about their business, sounds that would drift from one side of Earlsfort Terrace to the other. Hearing choirs, orchestras and solitary soloists is what inspired the idea of trying to capture the symbiosis of building and musician.
Much of the fun of the field recordings was pairing musicians with spaces, considering what might be suitable and why, what could different aspects of the building offer to artists and what might resonate as a result. I was drawn to the idea of the field recording aspect in which the musician and the equipment had to work with the space, an antithesis to the controlled, emulation of a typical recording studio environment. The objective was to get as much of the building and it’s sonic potential into the recordings as possible, without losing focus and taking away from what the musicians played.
I wanted it to be an experience that might be interesting for both the musician and the listener. Challenging the musicians, for the most part, to work on new material, with someone they hadn’t worked with before, in an unusual space. No small ask! I was keen to maintain any rawness and authenticity in the recordings, encouraging and utilising limitations in my own engineering abilities and with regards to takes, overdubbing and the idea of perfecting elements of tracks. The performances and standards of the musicians were sky high, and as a result, little or no editing was needed. To me the result is the listener being let in on a process of expression, discovery and exploration. It brought immense joy each and every time the mics opened up and process started to unfold, hearing the combination of musician and space.
I must extend my gratitude to the musicians for gallantly accepting the challenge and offering what they did to the project, and to the staff in the National Concert Hall also for accommodating over the those years and actively encouraging exploration of the building as a resource.
In The Echo: Field Recordings From Earlsfort Terrace (released by Erdigos) is out now - find out more here.
