Review: Darren Sng - Artificial Thyroarytenoids

“Versatility” may be the key word to define Darren Sng’s work. From film to orchestral, passing through electronic and experimental concert music, this London-based composer is passionate about multi-disciplinary music and is moved by a stubborn urge to challenge instrumental conventions in an extreme yet meaningful way. 

Darren was a nominee at the 2020 International Pannonia Film Music Competition and has scored several films, including “Mars”, short film from the director Hannah Beach.

Words by Marco Guerra

Discovered via http://musosoup.com

“Artificial Thyroarytenoids” is the result of the work that brought Darren together with several musicians, his fellow students at the Royal College of Music. Nine wind and string musicians that Darren conducted, in a mixture of classical instrumental performance and contemporary composition. “Artificial Thyroarytenoids” is their first commercial release as an ensemble and it is really interesting the idea behind it. As explained in the press release, thyroarytenoids are the muscles that support a person's vocal folds, which are key to producing sounds through vocalisation. The music features performers singing through their instruments (coupled with extended instrumental techniques such as key clicking) which warps their vocal/instrumental sound and creates a unique palette of musical colours, relating to the concept of "Artificial Throarytenoids".

The song is extremely rich visually, it fills our imagination as if we were inside an opera. The image of Jeremy Irons in David Cronenberg's “M. Butterfly”, (version 3.0) comes suddenly to mind. Beautiful, dramatic and nostalgic. "Artificial Throarytenoids" is in fact a musical piece with an artistic refinement, sophistication and complexity that very few can achieve.

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