IdolAbigail Toll (UK/DE)

electroacoustic, ambient, drone, noise, 2024

Idol originates from an encounter with a neolithic temple: a former burial site used to worship a goddess and the natural world. Sitting in silence for thousands of years, the site contains hollowed out acoustic chambers that resonate at 70Hz and 114Hz and affect physiological sensations on the body. When voices sound these frequencies together, powerful sonic reflections strike a “cosmological gateway through the boundaries of the underworld, into the realm of the dead.” (Reuben Grima)
Through sonic utterances, Idol imagines the ceremonial encounters that have taken place within this ancient architecture. The Goddess sculpture found at the centre of the site is an archetype reflecting the lives of neolithic women: from it, stretch lines of transmission between the (un)dead across time.
In the temple’s present silence are the residues of prayer and communal activity that linger as a cosmology of aural memories. Toll tunes voice, flute, glasses, and electronics to the temple’s resonant frequencies using the harmonic series to establish a vibratory musical language in dialogue with its dynamics of light and sound. As a divine and terrifying expression of commemoration, Idol asks: Where is the Goddess now?

Collaborator: Track Double Origin, vocals by Michaela Tobin

Abigail Toll (UK/DE)

Abigail Toll (UK/DE) is an experimental music artist and composer based in Berlin. Her psychoacoustic sound-worlds are a “beguiling concoction of abstract minimalism, pensive drone and thrumming electronics” (Boomkat). Her artistic research focuses on the anarchic sonic potential of datasets; ancient landscapes and architectures. Matrices of Vision is the title of her debut record which was released in September 2023 on Shelter Press. It was originally premiered as an ensemble performance, featuring Rebecca Lane, Lucy Railton, and Evelyn Saylor at KM28, and Klosterruine with KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. It was described by Bandcamp as “40 exquisite moments” and GRM: Radio France as “a fascinating record – hyper concentrated on [Toll’s] academic training which loops back to a kind of exorcism.” Toll studied English Literature and Art History (BA) at Sussex University, UK and Electroacoustic Composition (MA) at the KMH–The Royal College of Music in Stockholm, SE.

abigailtoll.com