Final Times is a piece of ‘cinema for the ears’ based on sounds I recorded in the city of Glasgow, where I live and work. It is a vibrant city. We hear cars, buses, trains and particularly the subway carriages’ distinctive shrieking of metal wheels on rails. The title is heard in the shout of a newspaper seller and there are more voices with local accents in the street, a football crowd and a lively pub. There is the rhythmic clicking of an escalator in Glasgow’s huge, Victorian railway station and the clatter of a train crossing tracks. The sounds and the images they conjure are reshaped and transmute, so that shapes shift, and new colours emerge. The clacking of the escalator becomes a train rattling on rails; voices are stretched into the hum and squeal of the subway train, which returns in the sound of a distant bagpiper on the street, shimmering like heat haze over the city.

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Final Times was realized in 1998 in the studios of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD). It was first broadcast on BBC Radio in March 1998 and first performed on December 4, 1998 during the Opening Statements concert of the Murmurs… 98 concert series produced by BEAST at the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham (UK). The piece was commissioned by the BBC for Radio Scotland.

Premiere

• December 4, 1998, Murmurs… 98: Opening Statements, Crescent Theatre, Birmingham (England, UK)