Description
This piece was commissioned by The Band of HM Royal Marines Scotland , and premiered at Royal Northern College of Music on February 24th 2022, conducted by Capt Tom Griffin.
Programme note – This piece was primarily inspired by a dumb meme internet video of the same name that I really enjoy. The video is basically about a bunch of lads misbehaving, and being completely unapologetic about it. What I found so inspiring about the short clip was this very raw and rowdy energy to it that I wanted to capture in a piece of music.
This video also led me to think about mob or gang mentality that people can very easily fall into. We are able to completely absolve ourselves of any personal responsibilty for silly or destructive behaviour so long as we are part of a large enough group acting the same way. This can be seen with schoolchildren in a classroom all the way up to adults at a sports event or in public demonstrations.
This piece is a commentary on this phenomenon. It uses dance rhythms to create a party or club vibe. It starts small but, as the sound gets larger, an insidious undertone present also creeps into the harmony and things get more and more out of control. This possibly leads to a scary place where it just gets nasty. I chose to write this piece because I have always found this kind of absolution of personal responsibility to be really toxic, and wanted to warn against it.
