Ep#106: Documenting Time Loops with Shiva Feshareki & Sarah Angliss {S06 Finale Special}

🎧 Listen on headphones 🎧 Some of this episode is recording in binaural audio.

What does it really take to compose a work for a 12-piece post-minimalist ensemble—using vintage synths, robotic bells, and tape echoes?

In this immersive episode of Girls Twiddling Knobs, we go behind the scenes of Time Loops, a bold and experimental project for Science Museum Group. 

Follow Isobel as she documents Shiva Feshareki and Sarah Angliss' compositional journey writing new commissions for Icebreaker Ensemble and vintage instruments like the EMS VCS4 synthesiser and Watkins Copicat. 

You'll journey from early rehearsals at Wysing Arts Centre to a spellbinding presentation at London’s Science Museum.

🎧 Expect binaural recordings, tape loops, behind-the-scenes conversations, and honest reflections on what it means to create—and be left out of—musical history.

🔗 Links To Go Deeper

Shiva Feshareki >>

Sarah Angliss >>

Thelma Rose >>

Gavin Bryars >>

Icebreaker Ensemble >>

Science Museum Group >>

Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studio >> 

Hugh Davies’s ShoZyg >>

Digitana Electronics >> 

Asa Bennett >>

Aris Solomon >>

Ed McKeon >>

Cathy Lucas >>

Wysing Arts Centre >>

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Girls Twiddling Knobs is hosted by Isobel Anderson and produced by Isobel Anderson and Jade Bailey.

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Transcript

There are five artists featured in this podcast episode.

But I won’t introduce them all at once.

Our journey begins here—

At Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge, 

On a rain-soaked September afternoon.

I’ve just stepped off the train,

Hopped in a taxi, 

Found the entrance,

And shrugged off my damp coat in the communal space.

From behind a heavy black door,

A wash of muffled drones leaks through.

“They’re playing through Shiva’s piece,” someone tells me.

I quietly ready my recording gear,

Waiting for the right moment to slip inside unnoticed.

I’ve been invited to document the compositional process of Shiva Feshareki and Sarah Angliss.

Yes, dear listener, they are artist #1 and artist #2 on this audio journey—

Both are writing a new piece for Icebreaker Ensemble.

A 12-piece post-minimalist group founded by musicians James Poke and John Godfrey.

To be performed in early 2025 at both London’s Science Museum

And Bradford’s National Science and Media Museum.

This trip to Wysing is a chance to witness the work in progress—

To catch the evolution of a composition as it unfolds,

And how both composers are incorporating vintage tech,

Alongside multiple musicians, and various stakeholders.

I heart the sound behind the door dissolve into silence.

I gather my kit and quietly enter the rehearsal space.

Sarah Playthrough

The moment I step into the room, I’m met by Icebreaker—

Spread like a constellation across the space.

At the centre, cellist and live electronics musician Audrey Riley is calmly directing.

Then my eyes land on a curious island of sound:

Analogue synthesisers huddled with what looks like a harpsichord to me,

Looking closer, I notice what I will later learn is the EMS VCS4 quietly waiting for its moment—

A presence I don’t yet realise will become a major player in our audio journey, dear listener.

To my left, engineer Asa Bennet and his assistant, Aris Solomon, are tucked behind a sound desk,

Gently tuning the sonic balance with careful hands.

And to my right—some chairs. 

I take a seat.

A few others are here too, and to my surprise, 

There is someone I recognise but haven’t seen for years among them.

It becomes clear that Shiva’s playthrough has just ended.

Damn.

But I’ve arrived just in time to catch Sarah Angliss’ piece

In its current, shifting state.

I slide my binaural mics into my ears.

And move into the centre of the space,

So I can capture the sound as its moves around me.

Sarah is guiding Icebreaker through the score,

Explaining where the piece stands now.

There are tech hiccups—

The kind that threaten to stall momentum.

She’s hoping to use the Watkins Copicat Tape Echo,

Blending it with other electronic elements.

For now, though, patience rules the room.

Eventually, the atmosphere settles.

I double check my binaurals are recording...

[Excerpt of Sarah speaking to Icebreaker]

There’s something quietly extraordinary

About documenting these composer-musician dialogues—

This tender back-and-forth that reshapes the work in real-time.

Notes are sounded, then struck from the page.

While new experiments become part of the piece in an instant.

We are hearing composition unfolding in real time.

Once the crowd slips out to the kitchen

For caffeine and scrolling,

I catch a moment with Sarah.

I want to know what’s going through her mind

During these tentative playthroughs—

And how she’d describe this piece,

Midway through its becoming.

Sarah Interview

Sarah is as much a genius inventor as she is a composer. 

For example, she’s brought her magnificent robotic, algorithmic bell instrument, The Ealing Feeder, along for the weekend— 

Made out of 29 handbells it can be programmed to chime in patterns much quicker than any human could. 

Trudi VCS4 Warm Up

We’re back in the rehearsal space.

People are resetting the room—

Shifting cables, adjusting stands, quietly preparing.

Remember when I mentioned that, among all the unfamiliar faces here at Wysing,

There was one I recognised? 

It was Trudi Thelma Veremu—

Once a student of mine at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance in London.

She tells me she’s just finished an MA in Sonic Arts at Goldsmiths,

And took the chance to sit in on these rehearsals through her course.

In fact, during her MA, Trudi began working with the very VCS4 synthesiser

Standing proudly in the centre of the room—

Loaned to Time Loops from Goldsmiths’ Electronic Music Studios.

She tells me, softly but clearly, how powerful it feels

To be ‘in the room’ with so many remarkable musicians and composers.

It’s something I’ve been feeling too.

But where our experiences diverge

Is in her awareness of being the only Black woman here—

A reminder that, even now, global majority women and queer people

Are rarely seen in experimental and contemporary classical spaces.

I’m struck by how her growing relationship with this iconic synthesiser, the VCS4

Is actually something close to unprecedented.

And quietly radical in its own way.

The EMS VCS4 was a prototype analogue synthesiser developed in the early 1970s by Electronic Music Studios (EMS) in London.

Intended as a portable quad-synth combining two VCS3 units with a keyboard and mixer, 

It never entered full production. 

Only one was built, making it an iconic rarity in electronic music history.

Trudi explains she’ll be helping ‘warm up’ the VCS4 for Shiva’s next run-through—

A slow coaxing of its oscillators into stability,

A process that can take a couple of hours.

So I ask if she’ll walk me through it as it happens.

It’s far too good a Girls Twiddling Knobs moment to pass up.

[Insert audio for trudi warm up]

A special treat was that Steve Thomas from Digitana Electronics was in the room,

Generously sharing his extensive knowledge of both the VCS3 and VCS4,

Helping to unlock the many layers of sonic protention within these instruments. 

Shiva Interview

There’s still some time before everything is ready for Shiva’s playthrough, 

So I take this opportunity to learn a little more about Shiva’s process and the piece that she’s written:

Shiva Playthrough

It’s time for Shiva’s second run-through.

Once again, I pop in my binaural mics, 

And move slowly through the space,

Spending time with each cluster of sound.

Let’s drift towards James Poke on the pan pipes.

And then the vibraphone as Dan Gresson plays the metal bars with a bow. 

And past Audrey Riley on the cello and Emma Watson on the violin.

When you record like this,

You almost become a performer yourself.

I feel some tension in the air

As I weave my path between the players—

Perhaps I'm not what they expected.

Maybe even a little too close.

Now, let’s linger with the woodwind.

And—damn—

I’ve knocked over Aubrey’s music stand.

A “no no” in most rooms,

but here, in the classical realm?

Practically a sin.

I’m struck by just how many people are part of this project.

Even in this generous space, we’re squeezed in—
 

Shiva’s piece feels nearly complete..

The Commissioning Process

But, I feel like I’ve skipped way ahead.

Because, one of the intentions for this episode was to document the process of composing, especially as a commission. 

And in the case of Time Loops, it’s been a project long in the making.

Time Loops was first co-conceived by Tim Boon and Audrey Riley and then subsequently produced by curator Ed McKeown and artist Cathy Lucas. 

The composers were approached back in December 2022…

[Insert Sarah + Shiva talking about the being approached) 

After AHRC funding was approved the following September, 2023, there was a meeting with all the composers and another with the creative and production team.

It wasn’t till April 2024–two years after the composers were first approached– that the project began officially.

In May 2024 Icebreaker, Shiva and Sarah meet for their first workshop in Visconti studios.

And the first team site visit to the Science Museum’s Information Age Gallery – one of the venues Time Loops will be presented– took place the following June.

Here we are now in September 2024 for the second workshops at Wysing Arts Centre before the pieces are due to be completed in December. 

There will then be rehearsals at both Goldsmiths and the Science Museum in January 2025 

Pre-Show at Science Museum

It’s now February 2025, dear listener,

And I’m standing in a temporary green room, 

Documenting the soundcheck ahead of the first Time Loops presentation in the Information Age Gallery at Londond’s Science Museum.

• Walk through soundcheck
  
  
  

The gallery is vast.

Icebreaker are scattered in and amongst the exhibits,

With walkways winding through the ensemble—

Designed for the audience to drift, pause, and listen as they move.

As I walk, the d&b soundscape begins to reveal itself—

Adam Hornblow’s immersive audio skills spatialising Asa’s sonic textures,

I steal Shiva for a moment—just long enough to hear how the piece has evolved since the Wysing rehearsal last September.

• Shiva pre-show interview
  
  
  

Further into the gallery, I spot Trudi at the VCS4.

She’s no longer just coaxing the instrument awake—

She’s preparing to perform.

Because about a month after Wysing,

Shiva asked Trudi to step into the piece

And bring the VCS4 to life as part of the performance.

And so, Trudi becomes our third featured artist—

Not only through her unexpected role in the project,

But also through her deepening connection with this iconic, elusive synthesiser.

• Trudi interview
  
  
  

The soundcheck is wrapped  

And I head to the upper foyer of the Science Museum.

To capture the hum and anticipation of the audience.

Shiva performance

Ed steps forward to welcome the audience,

Offering a few words before we all drift into the gallery together—

Where Shiva’s piece begins to unfurl, note by shimmering note.

And as you hear me move between the musicians—

As if you were walking the space yourself—

Let me share a little more

About Shiva’s piece in its final, fully realised form.

Shiva’s piece itself is called Time Loops and unfolds like a living installation—vintage analogue electronics, scattered instruments, and Icebreaker musicians are dispersed across the gallery like constellations.

Sounds collide in semi-spontaneous bursts, curated yet unpredictable, rising and dissolving within a fragile window of time.

For between zero and 42 minutes, the piece breathes—its form held not by permanence, but by a fleeting geometry of sound and space, slipping just beyond our control.

We don’t have time to listen to the whole piece here, so let’s skip forward to Sarah’s presentation:

Sarah Performance

Again, I will move through the space so you can hear the piece as it was to be experienced in the gallery.

Sarah’s piece is called Copicat and is her elegy to the iconic 1958 tape-echo machine by Charlie Watkins. 

Featuring Watkins’s voice and her Ealing Feeder bell instrument, the piece loops time—linking her past work at the Science Museum with new sonic curation. 

Inspired by display cases, instruments play transparently and in dialogue, including a 14th-century clavisimbalum (what I thought was a harpsichord) with digital piano—an oddly taxonomic pairing that invites reflection from every angle.

As the evening draws to a close, I’m struck by the intimacy of it all—

Perhaps the most tender experience I’ve ever had in a museum gallery.

To wander so slowly, so deeply,

Through every nook and hidden corner—

Bathed in sound, surrounded by others

Equally absorbed—

Is a rare kind of magic.

Then, suddenly, the spell breaks.

I see the time.

Gather my things in a hurry,
 

And just catch the last train home.

Post Bradford Reflections

I’m unable to make it to the second and final presentation of Time Loops in Bradford’s Science + Media Museum in March, but I ask Shiva, Sarah and Trudi for their reflections on the performance and the project as a whole.

The Twist

It’s important to say, dear listener, that there are countless ways I could have told the story of Time Loops—

And within that, countless stories I could have chosen to tell.

I could have focussed entirely on the history and application of the technology used.

Or lingered more on both Shiva and Sarah’s pathway into making music with technology.

Or zeroed in on just one playthrough to more intimately document this fascinating part of the composition process. 

Such is the magic—and the responsibility—of working in audio.

And therefore, I myself become the fourth artist in this episode.

Because, from the very beginning, I made choices:

What to record, how to record it.

Where I stood.

Who I spoke to.
 

Which microphones I used.

Later, I chose what recordings to keep and what to leave behind—

Hours distilled into fragments.

Even the most generous, intimate offerings from each artist

Couldn’t all fit here.

(Though they will find their own space
 in bonus episodes to come.)

I even shifted time—cut, spliced, reshaped—

So the story might breathe in the rhythm of a podcast.

In doing so, I unhooked words, music, and movement

From their original moment.

Took liberties, if you like.

But the most significant omission is this:

[Instagram DM]

Yes, dear listener—

A third composer was there all along.

And our fifth artist in this audio journey: Gavin Bryars.

Gavin Bryars

When he entered the rehearsal space in Wysing, it was almost like a rock star of the experimental music world had entered the building. 

At The Science Museum in London there was a queue of people, eagerly hoping to chat with him after the performance. 

The piece you’re listening to right now is the one he composed for Time Loops, called ShoZyg Revisited.

Through the piece, he returned to the experimental electronics of 1968–72, when he worked alongside the musician and inventor Hugh Davies. 

Though some instruments like the Orchestron and Fairlight couldn’t be sourced, he revived echo loops, magnetic tape, and the ShoZygs—devices Bryars once used with pianist John Tilbury. 

Revisiting his early works and methods, including spatial separation and indeterminacy, Gavin says this piece works as both an archaeological dig and a reflection on his own identity as a musical relic.

When I fan-girled Gavin for a brief moment at Wysing, he was modest–almost dismissive–of his compositional process.

But ShoZyg Revisited is a wonderful piece.

As wonderful as Shiva and Sarah's. 

It’s dynamic and textured and sensitive and lush. 

And while in the context of this podcast, it felt right to centre Sarah, Shiva and Trudi.

To honour the ways they weave technology into their compositional practice.

I also feel it’s important to acknowledging the absence of Gavin’s voice.

Because silence, too, speaks.

Because exclusion—of any kind—gives only half the story.

And as artists, audio producers, and people, we owe it to one another to witness the full breadth of what we bring.

There is a weight to this kind of honesty.

A tension between gratitude and longing.

I hold deep respect for the men who’ve shaped my creative path.

Yet I’ve never been taught composition or production by a woman.

The women who influence me now? 

Introduced almost entirely by other women.

And there are still so many women who didn’t get the breaks they deserved in music.

Because gatekeepers and historians left them out,

Or shut them out.

For example, Sarah shared an experience of this kind with me when I interviewed her:

Outro

I hope you have been given a sense of the compositional process I set out to document.

But beyond that, I hope that the reparational exclusion I made in this episode,

With context, not erasure—

Acts as a gesture of rebalancing, not repetition.

And an opportunity, through the five artists featured in this episode: 

Shiva, Sarah, Tudi, Gavin and myself,

To appreciate the consequences and harm caused by exclusion - whether conscious or otherwise,

From multiple perspectives.