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The Cavern of Deep Tones is a live quadraphonic surround-sound music performance based on taking movie music scores and totally perverting and decimating them into shiny new objects of weird noise. The original source material is exclusively sci-fi, horror and fantasy scores by Jerry Goldsmith, which themselves have pulped and reworked conventions established by European avant-garde composers in the first half of the 20th Century.

Following half a century of Hollywood’s carney hawking of atonality as a spooky Otherness, The Cavern of Deep Tones perversely takes Goldsmith’s pulp and reshapes it back into the expanded sono-musical terrain originally envisioned by the original avant-garde. Brophy’s work is, of course, as pulped as Goldsmith’s – but more moist and visceral in its electroacoustic form. There are stings, woodwinds and brass in there, but now they breathe openly in an entirely unnatural fashion.

Devised by Philip Brophy, The Cavern of Deep Tones' suite of pieces has been presented in a range of live and playback configurations, and has also been released on CD in Dolby Surround format on and on DVD-R in the full quadraphonic mix.

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1999: CD released on Sound Punch
1999: Excerpt - "Swarm" - presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 as part of the IMMERSION series of surround sound concerts @ Treasury Theatre, Melbourne; 4-channel version @ Anna Schwartz Gallery
2000: 4-channel remix version @ ACCA; stereo remix version @ Lounge
2003: 4-channel version as part of LIQUID ARCHITECTURE 5 @ Power House, Brisbane
2004: Excerpts - "Poltergeist" & "Swarm" presented in Dolby Surround @ Kyushu Institute of Design, Fukuoka, Japan
2008: DVD-R released on Sound Punch

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The concept of the connections between 20th Century atonality and popular iconography in monster/sci-fi/psycho movies is covered in two of Philip's research projects in this area: the articles Cinematic Electronics Part 2: Schizo Scherzos & Psycho Synths and Picturing Atonality Part 1: Birth of the Monstrous (from the series The Secret History of Film Music), plus the radio programme series Traces of Soundtracks.

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