Portland Dreams
Susanne Lambert (DE, 2025)
4 min
Suzi Lamb first visited Portland in the early 2000’s, as part of a DIY west coast tour with a band from my, (at the time) home of Brighton UK.
When she saw the option to work with a piece of Portland audio for this latest Cities and Memory project, something resonated, connecting me to the idea of distance between then and now in my own life, and that of her bandmates. That sense of how things move forward, inevitably, but that an aspect can also remain, that can be conjured up, and reconnected with, like a talisman or a map.
Sonically, she was drawn to create a piece consisting of several distinct movements, utilising a broad range of sounds, and a narrative that draws in the listener. She welcomed in happenstance, and several aspects came about by what my former A’level art teacher would refer to as ‘a happy accident’, including some of the vocal work between myself and collaborator Nicky Rushton - these were nice surprises, and I kept them in the final piece.
Elsewhere, she used small sections of the original recording, sometimes rhythmically, others atmospherically, and at others to inform melodic phrasing.
She called the work ‘Portland dreams’ in reference to the original audio, and in the way that a dream is a kind of memory, but can also be a vision for the future. Portland, or rather, the symbolism of Portland, can still be that place full of possibilities and freedoms she experienced for the first time back then, despite all the many changes in the world and myself since.