Ask any member of the Crow Hill team about my attention span and they will say that whilst—like most of us musos—I have the capacity for hyperfocus, I am also easily distracted; especially when it comes to something new. We’re meant to be working on a fascinating new addition to the “Origins” series, but unfortunately I am easy prey for an Instagram post featuring an instrument I hadn’t heard before. Correction: I’d heard gongs before, I’ve even had the chance to play one. But none that sounded like these ones. Or rather this one. The big one. So I bought a whole tree of them.
That’s what is so fulfilling about this Crow Hill Project. We get to make investments on behalf of the composing fraternity so we all get a go.
This vaults features four incredible sounding tuned gongs that were designed, I suspect, for gong bath therapy. Beautiful bold fundamentals, mystical, engaging harmonics, but also, a bottom end that shakes the room. I very much get the feeling that these gongs are not designed to be whacked. They really do complain when they’re abused in this way. The big one, well, she growls like a distant dragon, while the smallest protests in the shape of a scoop up an entire perfect fifth before it reluctantly settles into its fundamental.
We’re doing something incredibly exciting with these; a new way of sampling, but also treating these gongs with utmost respect, appreciating their soft, infinitely nuanced harmonics that change on every hit. The distraction has become a serious one—we’ve been taking weeks on these as they’re not easy to record. When something is shaking the room and all the air inside it, what do you mic? So we needed a test recording. End of the year, Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve to all you non-Scots) around the corner. What better way of ushering in 2026 than with a shuddering tree of room-shaking gongs? There are some lower dynamics in there, which will give you a sense of where we’re headed with this project; a useful tuned metallophone that’s difficult to place. But really, the purpose of this vaults is to gong these! So, for that odd time you need a gong for a cue, these are pure class. I also found turning my speakers up and playing these at full velocity an excellent way of getting my teenagers down for breakfast—they don’t like them at all.
