TECHNO music will be seen, but not heard, from a church tower in Dorset next week, in a live-streamed performance by the church musician and electronic artist Richard McLester.
Performing as RMCL, an abbreviated version of his name, Mr McLester plans to play electronic music live from the top of the tower of St James’s, Poole, a Grade II* listed Georgian church close to Poole Harbour.
The event is scheduled to take place at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, but will be postponed in the case of bad weather.
Mr McLester and his team go to great lengths not to disturb the environment in which they perform — which, in the past, has included Corfe Castle and Agglestone Rock, both in Dorset.
“People assume it’s like a rave party . . . but it’s not quite like that,” he said. While Mr McLester will be performing live, nothing will be audible from the tower. Instead, the sound is fed to his earphones, and to a live stream that will be playing inside the church and online.
Mr McLester was director of music at St Peter’s, Parkstone, for 13 years, until last summer, and does not see a hard border between traditional church music and techno.
At St Peter’s, he “tried to push the fine line between more traditional things and combining it with modern tech”, he said, and he emphasises the similarities between the organ and the array of synths, computers, and mixing desks he uses in his techno sets.
“When you make techno, it’s actually pretty similar to making organ music. . . A pipe organ is exactly the same as a synthesiser,” he said. Unlike some electronic music artists and DJs, he is creating all of the sounds live, and then sequencing them to build a complex, interweaving soundscape.
The act is essentially improvisatory, and therefore influenced by the space in which he is performing. Factors such as the weather and wildlife have an effect on the music, and Mr McLester expects to incorporate some choral elements into his performance at St James’s.
Each performance is also a team effort, he said, with a drone pilot, camera operators, and technical support. Mr McLester is the founder and lead artist of the collective One City One Light (OCOL), which is organising the event.
Previous shows include an art installation in Salisbury Cathedral, in which a large illuminated sphere was suspended in the spire crossing (Arts, 18 January 2019).
The broadcast director for OCOL, Toby Gardner, emphasised the challenges of performing in “unconventional places”. “It will be a long climb up the tower with all our kit, but we have done worse,” he said.