A room tone recording made in 2019 while on artist residency at Church Walk, Aldeburgh, former home of Imogen Holst – daughter of Gustav Holst, composer, conductor, arranger, musicologist, and assistant to Benjamin Britten. The modest kitchen, where Imogen could famously ‘only cook eggs’, is set within a 1960s modernist bungalow designed by H.T. Cadbury-Brown.
Immediately after the original recording is heard, for thematic variation and in tribute to Imogen’s father’s ‘The Planets’ suite, the material is performed in retrograde i.e. played backwards, echoing the apparent motion of planetary bodies in space.
Imogen Holst’s Kitchen / Imogen Holst’s Kitchen In Retrograde was aired as part of Radiophrenia in 2022.