Artist and filmmaker Sapphire Goss announces her debut standalone recording, Light Sensitive Materials, arriving 27th April via Fr33zehead Records. Known for her "analogue uncanny" moving image works, Goss shifts her focus to the sonic realm, unearthing a series of unsettling ambient poly-drones from the very fabric of decaying film.

At the heart of the recording is the "Celluloid Synthesiser", a process of visual-to-audio sonification. By translating the luminance, dust, and scratches of expired 8mm reels into pitch and tone, Goss dredges sound from the cracked terrain of the film surface.

Created during a period of personal and global upheaval, Light Sensitive Materials is a visceral exploration of fog, disintegration, and erasure. The result is a collection of "last reveries" that feel less like compositions and more like archaeological finds; haunted, off-kilter, and deeply atmospheric.

Available 27th April on Cassette and Digital.

The name 'Light Sensitive Materials' comes from a photochemical company in the former USSR, “SVEMA”, an abbreviation for Svetochuvstvitelnye materialy: light-sensitive materials in Russian. The first 8mm I shot was an expired film from the SVEMA factory in what is now Ukraine (Shostka Reel, 2022). The audio is created by making sonifications of film reels I have shot, taking the luminance, the light and dark, and creating sound from them. Parameters like tone, pitch etc can be adjusted. I call it the "Celluloid Synthesiser". A lot of the sounds come from the holes punched at the end of the reels; the black at the edge of the frames; scratches and dust. Sound dredged from the cracked terrain of the film surface. I mix that with field recordings on tape and samples from the USC optical sound effects library, samples that sound designers used to carry around on tape and share, degraded with each recording. Optical sound is also light waves to audio. 

Ultimately this was made in the foggy midst of a collapse of a 10 year relationship, in a wider context of horror, with a deadline that forced me to not think very much at all. Looking back I have no idea what the intentions were or sometimes the exact sources of each sound. I was in limbo, more than a little intoxicated, and just followed my instinct until I liked what came out. I don’t know if I would have broken through the imposter syndrome any other way. I am not certain of what I am doing but I know what I like, or at least what was needed at that time. Listening back is very mysterious, a very oblique look at a period where I was unhinged, off-kilter and probably in a lot of pain. My mind has blocked that out for now like so many decayed reels. Fog, disintegration, decay: erasure is a protection sometimes as well as a loss. Material, personal, global. This feels like something I have unearthed rather than made. The last reveries of dying worlds.

All songs created by Sapphire Goss

Mastering by Rob Shields

Thanks to Rob Shields, Andi Jackson, Andy Starke, Subterra and Fermynwoods Contemporary Art

Screenings / Live:

Clearing, Dover Road Gallery, Folkestone Fringe

Psychedelic Drone Stage by East Sussex Psychedelic Film Club