We are proud to present Live Organs, Mechanised Ghosts, an installation by Sam Longbottom as part of Sonorities Festival 2026.
Live Organs, Mechanical Ghosts is an ongoing project for computer-controlled organ pipes and balloons. Large 72” balloons act as air reserves, feeding solenoid valves triggered by a computer. Air is then passed into a smaller lung-like balloon attached to an organ pipe, allowing each note to swell, glide, and fade in ways unlike traditional organs. The music lies uncannily between the clearly artificial control of air flow heard through the clicking of valves and the organic nature of the sounding pipes—though themselves ‘glitching’ as their supplied air pressure fluctuates. It is repetitive and self-similar music created from an algorithmically processed extract of material from Medieval composer Pycard. It is delicate music, melancholic and mechanical sighs gently evaporating and surrounded by phantom glitches.
Opening Hours:
Wednesday 15th April - Saturday 18th April
12-4pm.
Sam Longbottom is a Manchester-based composer making experimental music with found, homemade, and traditional instruments. Much of his current work explores the imperfect, unusual and unexpected sounds of
automated systems and acoustic instruments, of mechanising glitches and peripheral noises. It is tactile, with physical things producing physical sounds encouraging physical movement of listeners.
His music has been featured at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, in Nonclassical concerts at the Southbank Centre and St John’s Church (London), Manchester Art Gallery, and broadcast on BBC’s New Music Show. He has previously been a Britten Pears Young Artist, a Manchester Camerata Ruth Sutton Fellow, a resident at Villa Ruffieux (Switzerland), and worked with artists and groups including Angarhad Davies, The House of Bedlam, and CoMA.
View the full Sonorities Festival programme at sonorities.net/2026/