A seven-note melody keeps returning, a little slower and quieter each time. Underneath it, a river runs. By the end, the electronics have fallen quiet and there’s only water.
That’s Sleep, Little Machine. Four minutes. A lullaby for the infrastructure we keep asking to do more. I wanted to hear what would happen if I asked it to rest.
On October 6, I submitted the piece to BC Studies’ Soundworks call on air, wildfire, and water. Getting there involved several musical experiments, some fake water I couldn’t stand, and a recording Suzy Easton sent me from Jericho Beach.
Listen at Little Supercluster
The listening room currently plays the earlier river-ending mix, alongside the other experiments. The submitted version adds Suzy’s Jericho Beach ending.
Let the water be water
We tried different arrangements and built a longer suite. I kept coming back to the lullaby. Seven notes, seven returns. Each time, less insistence. The melody gives you something to recognize while the piece gradually makes more room for everything around it.
The first water sounds were synthesized. They sounded crispy to me. I didn’t like it. I wanted real recorded water, with its own movement and irregularities. Keep making the machine sounds with the machine. Let the water be water.
Thimras’s CC0 river recording from a park in Adelaide, South Australia became the water beneath most of the piece. That source is credited by name and place. You’re hearing an Australian river in a project made in Vancouver.
In the listening room, you can hear the full mix or isolate the water and machine layers. Try the water on its own, then bring the electronics back. Notice how quickly a melody can tell your ears where to go.
Suzy sent me the beach
Suzy sent one clip from Jericho Beach, then three more water recordings. Somebody else had gone out, heard something worth keeping, and sent it over. That changed the project. I wanted her listening in the piece.
With her permission, I gave the Jericho recording the ending. It enters near 3:37. By 3:40, the electronics have stopped and the Adelaide river has given way to the Vancouver shore. Suzy’s recording has the final twenty seconds to itself.
After seven returns, you know the tune. I’m curious whether you keep waiting for it to come back. Whether you can settle into what’s already there.
The two recordings carry different places into the work. The companion essay keeps those origins visible and locates the Vancouver end on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Water comes from somewhere. So does the infrastructure that uses it.
Putting the machine to bed
The sleeping machine first appeared in my May data-centre protest signs: server racks tucked under a pink quilt, crescent moon overhead. Hush now, little supercluster. There was affection in that image. It made me want to try a lullaby.
I wrote about the tension after the protest on Granville Street. I love making things with these tools. I also want answers about the land, water, energy, and people their infrastructure depends on. The music gives me a way to sit with that tension for a few minutes. Even a machine can have a fucking bedtime.
Why BC Studies?
BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly has been publishing at UBC since 1969. It brings history, politics, culture, geography, and art into the same conversation about this place. I like that a journal with that history has made room for people to think with their ears.
Its Soundworks section publishes peer-reviewed sonic compositions and recordings with accompanying writing. The air, wildfire, and water call welcomes artistic, ecological, activist, and political approaches tied to the lands of BC. Julie Andreyev, the Soundworks Associate Editor, is the contact for the call.
There’s plenty to listen to already. Start with Michele Koppes’s Water Rhythms, which works with recordings of glaciers and rivers, or Jacek Smolicki’s Intertidal Room: A Soundwalk through Timescapes of Vancouver’s Coastline. Follow those into the archive.
The deadline is October 15, 2026: a 320 kbps MP3 and 250–2,000 words connecting the work to the theme, BC, and a critical approach to sound. If you’re making something that belongs in that conversation, have a look.
The submission
I sent the single lullaby. The longer suite and other studies helped me find it; four minutes felt right for this particular idea.
- Soundwork: Sleep, Little Machine, 4:00, stereo, 48 kHz, 320 kbps MP3.
- Companion: an 807-word essay including methods, with a 204-word abstract and references.
- Water recordings: Thimras, Adelaide; Suzy Easton, Jericho Beach, Vancouver.
- Submitted: October 6, 2026, Vancouver time. BC Studies submission 203582. Receipt confirmed; editorial decision pending.
The essay draws on Barry Truax’s writing on soundscape composition and follows the choices behind the piece: which sounds belong, where they come from, and when to leave them alone.
Production note: Under the composer’s direction, Codex (models gpt-6-astra and gpt-6.1-sol) assisted with production code, manuscript drafting and revisions.
Suzy’s clips also got me thinking about what other people might send. A leaking pipe keeping time. Water underneath a ferry dock. Melting ice. A storm drain that sounds like a synth someone forgot to turn off. There’s a whole collection waiting in that invitation: send me water doing something interesting.
Put on headphones and give the machine four minutes. Then take them off. What’s the water doing where you are?