Stereo recording realised at the studio at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, a pin-ball musique concrète work– 19 min.

Sometimes an object from daily life can become the foundation for a wild but also somewhat political piece. Not long after the great success of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy, I decided to make a piece solely with the sounds of pinball machines. I had had a mechanical one as a child and pinball halls were ubiquitous in the late 70s/early 80s.

The best way to talk about this piece is to tell stories about it. It is virtually impossible to record a pinball machine without the venue’s ambiance. I was able to talk a pinball hall manager near me in Amsterdam to open early, brought some microphones and contact microphones, and started spending and playing although, to be honest, I wasn’t that good. Clearly, I didn’t end up with sufficient material from which to make the piece by the time the door opened.

Still, luck was with me as a young boy appeared with dozens of other people who was indeed a ‘pinball wizard’. I asked him whether I could record his playing (paying for him to play, of course) and captured some of the best sequences in the piece. Suffice to say that he was a child of a ‘guest worker’. This, in itself, is not worth sharing were it not for another story to be told.

The recordings made that morning were the sole materials used. No attempt was made to cut out the ambient sounds of most of them. After analysis, a structure evolved with solo pinball machine sections and more general washes of several of them at once. The piece would begin with a machine similar to the old mechanical one I once had, rare by then. This mechanical machine would continue throughout the piece but would only be heard once the sole echo fade-out effect was used at the end of the piece’s finale leaving the mechanical machine as what’s left.

This piece took weeks to compose on old reel tapes. I did this after work hours and the only person in the building was the cleaner. Yes, you guessed it, another guest worker from Turkey. Sometimes I’d buy him an awful cup of tea from the building’s machine; sometimes he bought me one but only once asked what I was doing and I replied ‘composing’.

On the day of the mix, I noticed he was standing outside the door of the studio. When I completed the mix of 18 minutes in one go of three machines into one, I was totally exhausted and he appeared with a cup of tea … and said ‘You’re right’. I replied, ‘right about what?’ He then followed with one of the best non-sequiturs I’d ever heard. He asked: ‘Do you know my cousin?’ Startled, I replied, ‘I don’t think so’. I asked: ‘what does he do?’ ‘He has a butcher shop in Hilversum.’ I replied, ‘that’s great and what are his future plans?’ His answer went as follows: ‘He’s doing well and hopes to return to the East of Turkey once he has earned enough money to build a hotel for his family’. I replied: ‘that’s wonderful’. He continued, ‘but has nothing to do when not working and has wasted all of his earnings on these machines, gambling too!’ He added, ‘please give me a copy of your piece and I shall play it at all Turkish cultural centres in Holland. They need to be confronted with this addiction’.

What’s left might have to do with the left of politics. Who knows? But my dramaturgy for making a pinball piece as amplified more than I could imagine by my work colleague. It was worth it from that moment onwards.

What’s Left