DRUMROLL

DRUMROLL (2020) is an immersive audio artwork made in collaboration with Richard Sharp. The work is composed for 8 drummers and was distributed online as an audio download on New Year’s Eve 2020 to create a shared (but distant) listening event.

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Images
Photo Credit: Dom Moore

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Who helped to make this

DRUMROLL is made in collaboration and co-authored with Richard Sharp. The work is mixed and mastered by Neil Rose, and the project was produced by Flock South West. 

DRUMROLL was made with the support of 143 backers on Crowdfunder and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Project partners:
a space arts (Southampton); Airspace Gallery (Stoke-on-Trent); Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth); Broadway Studio & Gallery (Letchworth); Drift Records (Totnes); Exeter Phoenix (Exeter); Holden Gallery (Manchester); In Certain Places (Preston); Look Again (Aberdeen); Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange (Penzance); Plymouth Culture (Plymouth); Soundart Radio (Totnes); Take A Part (Plymouth); The Silver Stream on Soho Radio (London); and Visual Art South West.

Where this work has ended up

DRUMROLL is available to listen to online as a free, downloadable artwork; along with the accompanying score. If you are interested in performing the score (with an 8 piece percussionist ensemble), please get in touch with LOW PROFILE.

Bonus content

LP talk about DRUMROLL

Listen to LOW PROFILE & Richard Sharp discuss DRUMROLL with Byzantia Harlow for The Silver Stream, Soho Radio

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Download Score

Download a copy of the full players score for DRUMROLL – composed & written by Richard Sharp. This 185 page PDF gives you detailed instructions for performing the work (as an 8 person percussionist ensemble), with additional illustrations by LOW PROFILE

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Impromptu

DRUMROLL

DRUMROLL takes a simple, recognisable musical flourish (a drumroll) and extends and expands this to create an evocative, engaging, immersive listening experience.

Drumrolls are often used to command attention, create anticipation, charge a crowd, and signal that something ‘big’ and exciting is about to happen. In DRUMROLL, LOW PROFILE use these associations to draw parallels with (and speak to) a range of collective experiences during 2020 – feelings of tension, urgency and anticipation; sustained periods of waiting, transitions from one state to another, and longing for change; prolonged frustration and the desire for a release. 

DRUMROLL was first released on 31st December 2020 – a time when people might (in a more usual year) be celebrating the New Year with friends, family or loved ones. However, DRUMROLL was made and distributed during the first winter of the global COVID-19 pandemic, with many local, national and international restrictions on movement, travel and mixing in place. 

As a remote-but-connected listening experience, DRUMROLL was designed to offer listeners a moment of pause and reflection, a boost of energy, a cry for things to be different, and a hopeful promise that what comes next will be better for us all. 

LOW PROFILE also commissioned their collaborator Richard Sharp to create a full players score, giving detailed instructions for future performances of the work by an 8 person percussionist ensemble.