To u.s..s…

Over the past ten years, I have been constantly influenced and inspired by the works of my various students and colleagues in the University of Sheffield Sound Studios (USSS)… to the point that my musical ideas and interests has been profoundly shaped by the people that I have had the pleasure of working with. In early 2022, I left Sheffield’s music department, and this piece was my parting ‘gift’: an homage to my amazing colleagues, students, and friends that have been – and continue to be – such an inspiration. It contains references to around 30 of my students and their unique interests, but starts with a lengthy pastiche of Adrian Moore’s Counterattack. This work is, in a sense, my view on where acousmatic music is going; a blending, fusing, integration of ideas old and new, clichéd and novel, emerging and disappearing… In my postmodern ‘toast’ to the University of Sheffield Sound Studios, therefore, please raise your glasses ‘To Us’… or rather, ‘To USSS’… or rather, ‘To US.S..S…’