"Imagine a particle in a vortex. You are that particle."
Vortex is Adam Jansch's first multi-channel sound work, written for an equidistant ring of eight speakers. In the piece, a squadron electric guitars encircle the listener, with a multi-phasing process applied in which the separation of all the parts is gradually diminished until, at the end of the piece, they all collapse together.
The sound world of Vortex was created from a one-take recording of electric guitar loops built up using a Boss DD-6 delay pedal, which was then sent through a 'contracting delay' process. In this process, the eight speakers start with different delay times which are linearly ramped down to zero over the course of the piece.
The result of this process is an intense sonic experience, as the speakers' outputs go in and out of phase, finally fusing together in a maelström of sound at the piece's conclusion.