Anyone who has heard the Beatles’ Revolution No 9 will be familiar with musique concrète: a compositional style based around the manipulation of existing recordings and found sounds, one pioneered by the likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Sovereign Bodies/Ritual Taxonomy is very much a sound collage in this vein: a jarring sonic montage assembled by Belfast-based composer Jamie Thompson featuring snatches of free jazz, opera, hip-hop, electronica, spoken word and broadcast news. It sounds like someone maniacally dialling between multiple stations on multiple radios.
