ground glass.
CT images of the ground glass mosaic attenuation pattern in my lungs upon expiration. Healthy lungs shouldn’t appear mottled, having uneven opacities like mine, which show CO2 gas trapped deep inside the lung tissue.
Many thanks to Thomas Meluch, a.k.a Benoît Pioulard, for graciously lending the vocal melody at the end of ground glass.
In early 2013, Foxes In Fiction & Benoît Pioulard released a 7” on Wool Recordings. It was comprised of two songs, running just over eleven minutes combined. I heard it first on Spotify (before we knew how compromised the platform is) and immediately favorited it. I was especially drawn to the mournful synth, the woman’s mysterious voice, the chimey guitar, and finally Thomas’ vocals so drenched in reverb that I can’t pick out all of the lyrics even to this day. It’s perfectly gorgeous. I imagine sunlight streaming through cathedral windows, me completely enveloped by the space and the feedback and the moment.
I’ve never understood the context of the title to the song. Perhaps the ground glass is the faded mirror that the woman mentions at the beginning. Could be the golden light from the cathedral windows that I imagine. Or maybe something I haven’t thought of yet.
Anyway, after learning about my lung disease, and specifically the diffuse ground glass pattern shown on my CT, I revisited the song. I listened to it much the same way I had when I first discovered it: on constant repeat. It perfectly captured the fragility I felt. And I knew I needed to compose something that made me feel the same way.
The piece developed over the course of a few months—as I laid down the field recordings of the storm, as I recorded my breath into the CPAP machine I use at night, as I forged the metallic sample into its binaural grind—I still felt something was missing. And that’s when I went back to the source for inspiration.
With Thomas’ blessing, I quickly recorded the five-note sequence—the haunting vocals that close out his version of Ground Glass. And it was just what the piece needed.
