DB Amorin’s “long shadow” is a 40 minute “soundride” on the MAX Red Line train in Portland, OR from Pioneer Courthouse Square to PDX Airport.

Note from the composer:

Nostalgia for the transition between summer and fall on the Windward side of O’ahu, Hawai’i loomed large over the course of the pandemic. It is a time when the orographic lift of the Ko’olau mountain range creates a type of daily micro-climate with a unique, fleeting ambiance. There, the heaviness of summer’s humidity dissipates, replaced by a deeper iridescence.

Much like Portland’s brilliant summers that seem to emerge from nowhere and fade just as quickly, these ephemeral environments we long for shift over time, and move into something different. We ache for their return, and when they do we discover what was true about them then may not be true any longer. Spatio-temporal displacement, transitional spaces and the desire to return to that which may no longer be familiar to us serve as points of departure for this layered audio experience. The composition is designed to trace the path of the MAX Red Line from the urban center of Portland to the Portland International Airport: a contemplative space encased in physical movement, the first step towards an unreachable there, a conversion of the present into past and experience into memory.

The audio vignettes presented consist of overlapping synthetic sounds, sonic fabrications and manipulations based on daydreams, half-memories, contradictory language, and the mediated experience of distant places. Riders are welcome to peer into the additional long shadow guide, an extension of the audio composition and experimental narrative that details some of the prompts used as a collaborative score between the artist and generative audio latent diffusion models trained on open source audio libraries.

Although timed for the duration of a ride from the city center to the last stop on the Red Line, listeners are encouraged to experience the audio during still moments on any ride in the TriMet system, to highlight public transportation as a site of communal contemplation, and overlapping individual experiences.

Deep and resonant gratitude to Third Angle New Music and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art for co-presenting long shadow, and to Chloe Alexandra Thompson for audio mastering and eternal support.