Red Lake / Black Mine - Album

Red Lake / Black Mine is a new multimodal work by composer and visual artist Will Parker - formed by walking, digging and collecting in an area of inland Cornwall referred to as the ‘Carnon Valley’. A trapezoid of land enclosed by the A30, A39, A390 and A393 roads. The title is derived from Baldhu (translation black mine) and Wheal Maid, a former arsenic and copper mine, where the toxic drainage water has formed a crimson lake.

The work exists in correlative forms: album, book, and performance. A contemplative communion of sounds, images and text, interwoven from conversations, police reports, buried books, newspaper articles, historical sources and personal journals. Unearthing narratives, abstracted themes and emotional forces.

Offering a delicate, fragmented sound world with an intense ASMR-like proximity to the body - Red Lake / Black Mine is a confluence of diverse sonic materials. Modular synthesis meets environmental sounds, deconstructed hymns, opera and VLF recordings of pylons.