Nightports return with Minster, an immersive electronic work made entirely of recordings of the bells that have rung out over the city of Hull for centuries, and of the clock mechanism that has marked that time.

The new work will be performed at Hull Minster this coming Friday, March 17th, as part of The Awakening, the prelude to this year’s Hull Freedom Festival. With live spatialisation across 24 speakers set up around the magnificent 14th century church, this music delves deep into the resonances of the space and plays with the rich acoustics of the building. There will be four performances, at 6pm, 7pm, 8pm and 9pm – all free to attend.

Recordings of the work, undertaken at the Minster in August 2022, will be released as an album, available on all digital services on April 7th. The track ’Trinity’ (after the Minster’s previous and longstanding incarnation as Holy Trinity Church, the name by which it was known until 2017) is released today on Bandcamp.

Nightports is based on a simple rule of restriction: only sounds captured for a particular project can be used. Nothing else – no samples or synths or drum machines – though the sounds captured can be stretched, cut, morphed and twisted, ordered and reordered. All of the sounds of this performance come from Hull Minster. It is music in and of this special place.