CMU Approved

Approved: 8B5C3B++

By | Published on Wednesday 5 September 2018

Chris Parmenidis

Chris Parmenidis is the founder and chief sound engineer of Unity Mastering in London, where he has worked on albums by artists including Paloma Faith, Joe Strummer and Primal Scream. He’s also composed music for film and TV, and is a regular contributor to the Universal Production Music catalogue. But his new project, ‘8B5C3B++’, takes him into new territories.

As an album, ‘8B5C3B++’ is an incredible ambient composition. Sounds appear as characters in an evolving story that you can interpret as you wish, as it moves slowly in numerous directions that keep you engaged across its 45 minute run time.

“‘8B5C3B++’ is an electronic album unlike anything else I have released before”, says Andy Blackhouse of experimental label Focused Silence, which has put out the record. “There are striking juxtapositions in noise and form. Sometimes delicate, sometimes thundering, all the time intriguing”.

While all of that is true, there is another level to the project which will not reveal itself on your standard hi-fi set up or headphones. The album is designed to be played through a newly designed immersive speaker set up, which aims to “materialise space and time as physical entities”.

This sound system will be heard for the first time in a live performance of ‘8B5C3B++’ at Saint Augustine Church in Kilburn, London on 13 Oct.

Parmenidis explains: “The speaker arrangement in the church will have a real distance between closer and further sounds which creates new dimensions and actual depth into the sound, which are qualities that don’t exist in conventional stereo or surround systems”.

Tickets for the show are available now. In the meantime, listen to the album here:

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