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Babel is a large-scale musical structure making use of many technologies and music languages, with each piece of music being thought of as a “room” or place within an enormous tower city. In the main section are 3 CDs where each track corresponds to a virtual architecture. The pieces are divided into two kinds: aural representations of actual spaces (e.g. The Dressing Room, The Stairwell, Mr. Brady’s Room), and internalised dream spaces (e.g. The Room of Rhetoric, Mall Fountain, the Spirit Levels, the Mansard childhood memory room). Listeners can navigate their way differently through this CD building at each hearing if they so wish. As a Babel ‘supplement’ are the 2 CDs of KBBL - the Tower’s fictitious radio station. Each of its 4 ‘shows’ has its own style and atmosphere. Collaborating with DJs, actors, writers and singers, KBBL is made to sound like a real radio station with ads, traffic reports, phone-ins etc. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO EXCERPTS FROM 3 OF THE KBBL SHOWS  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. As an example of the many connections and links within Babel, two routes can be taken. The first is an architectural one: the saxophonist in the off-stage dressing room is rehearsing for her solo in the concert-hall (heard in Pagoda Charm) as is Mr. Brady, whose room is somewhere off the stairwell, where the sounds of piano lessons and apartment life can be heard. The Squat is another apartment off the stairwell. KBBL can be overheard in the stairwell, the squat, Mr. Brady’s room, the room of rhetoric and in the temple rehearsal space. There are other more hidden connections waiting to be discovered (e.g. the Movie Theme is buried in a Dark Scenery and an Entry Level) The second connections route is a musical one, at a molecular level. The Iron Language Alphabet (one of the six Temple Musics from six unspecified religions) is a sound alphabet containing tiny fragments of sound representing letters or characters of an alien alphabet. At the start of this piece, after an heraldic trumpet solo, letters are introduced one by one slowly and then sped up. This sound alphabet can be heard scattered through other pieces like: The Room of Rhetoric, Pagoda Charm, Entry Level I and in KBBL in Johnny’s Body at 002 and Navigation. Other molecular scatterings can be found in Cantilena where two songs sung by Elena Lopez in KBBL are exploded and re-arranged to form new entities, and in the Leisure Pursuits Show from KBBL three pieces from its Morning Show are cannibalised in Senanbru Vendanswi. There is also convergence - the Entry Levels are like overtures, openings or peepholes and contain material from all parts of the Tower. Babel celebrates language (a slight variation on the Biblical morality tale) and musical expression in all its variety. Babel has no end or beginning. Its pieces are in suspended animation, waiting for the play button. All music composed and produced by Roger Doyle (p) © PRS/MCPS 1990-1999 (main section); and 1988-1999 with short excursions into the early eighties (KBBL). CLICK HERE FOR EXTRACTS FROM A NUMBER OF PIECES FROM BABEL Interview with Roger Doyle on Babel
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background photos © Tim Redfern