"And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free."
T.S. Eliot - The Wastelands.
As covered in the last blog post Invergordon was extremely active during wartime. The tank farm was supplying the fuel to the masses of warships sleeping on the Cromarty Firth. But what if these tanks were hit and destroyed? It can be easily done as seen in the case of Tank number 13. What if the way the fuel was transported to Invergordon destroyed? What if for whatever reason they ran out of fuel? This would be disastrous for the war effort and the Navy ships would be stuck in the Cromarty Firth like sitting ducks with no fuel to move. They needed a fuel reserve and a reserve that was bomb proof and undetectable. The answer lies behind Invergordon and deep inside the hills. The secret oil tanks storing the fuel were the stuff of legend when I was young, you heard about them from different people around town but there was never a great deal of information. The location itself was even a mystery to me back then and I spent some time guessing its whereabouts. When I did hear where it was I thought it would be straightforward to find the entrance. My line of thought was that they were massive so they must have an easy way in. I was wrong again and pretty soon the fascination I had faded as I got older, never left but just faded. Even after the war had ended and the world moved on the hills were still doing their job and keeping their secret.
"Return to Highlands' Inchindown secret tunnels" - BBC Article
In recent years the tanks have become even more famous but this time on a world stage rather than a local one. This is thanks to Professor of Acoustic Engineering Trevor Cox when he fired a pistol in the tanks and it reverberated for a staggering 112 seconds. The tanks and their mystery were then broadcast on a feature for the BBC's One Show. This brought renewed interest for me as a musician and someone who is fascinated by sound. Plus the longest echo in the world was a few miles behind my hometown meaning there was a good chance I could experience this for myself. This opportunity came when I started this project on abandoned places. A few photographers and a Sound Production Tutor from the University of the Highlands and Islands came along with a tour guide. An abandoned, secret location with a world-class sound is the perfect combination.
Spaces and the relationship they have to sound has always interested me, ever since hearing David Byrnes lecture on how architecture shaped music.
How architecture helped music evolve | David Byrne
He states in his book How Music Works that " instruments were carefully fashioned, selected, tailored, and played to best suit the physical, acoustic, and social situation" (Byrne.2012). To break this down further let's take the example of Brazilian street music which you can hear in the link on the left. This type of music fits brilliantly into its surrounding environment. The sound is not too much, there is no dissonance or nasty sounding clashes and the
reverberation is just right. It is suited to this type of environment. You cannot help but sometimes picture a street in Brazil with a group of drummers when you hear this music. A perfect example of how close the relationship between space and music is and how they complement each other and add to the experience as a whole. Now let's transport this type of music into the tanks of Inchindown with its high reverberation or a cathedral or concert hall with a similar reverb. Pretty soon you would find that the noises will build up and up because the reverberation time is so long and it would sound like a musical mess. Now let us look at the other side of the coin, for example, take some music heard in churches and cathedrals. Listen to the music in the link to the right. This music has notes that last longer, use
slower moving melodies, no dramatic changes and use the reverberation to create nice sounding clashes with the notes. Likewise, it is hard to not hear this type of music and picture a church or cathedral of some sort. This music fits well into these types of spaces and uses them to their advantage. Music along these lines would fit into the Inchindown tanks nicely given the massive echo. Perhaps an example of a space shaping and suggesting what type of music would be best to play in it. Extremely interesting for both musicians and listeners.
The secret of the sound in Inchindown comes from the tanks sheer size. In the hill, there are 5 tanks side by side with a sixth smaller
one. According to Allan Kilpatrick who works at the RCAHMS (Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland) they are twice the size of a football park, 9 m wide and 13.5m tall. A very big secret to keep behind a small town like Invergordon. We spent an hour walking around the tank playing with the sound, experimenting and experiencing. As you can hear from the videos the sound was incredible.
I began thinking of different instruments that would create interesting sounds within the tanks. As Professor Cox points out in his blog post lower pitched sounds travel the best. Kettle drums or even a low tuning on a guitar would have had amazing results.
Click on the image for a link to the sound blog on Inchindown.
While leaving the tanks through the long tunnel to the light of day you could not help but think of something of that magnitude just sitting there abandoned. Certainly, from the town and from the outside you simply cannot tell that something so massive and impressive lies inside it. This thought makes me feel uneasy because the hill is in plain sight from my home. I simply cannot leave the house and not see the hill and think of it. Leaving the Tanks behind and hearing the cold steel doors slam shut and the noise it made when it locked was chilling. Once again the secret tanks were alone and abandoned and once again it was left to its darkness.
References
TS. Eliot. The Waste Land. Poetry Foundation : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
Steven McKenzie. "Return to Highlands' Inchindown secret tunnels". BBC Article : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-14418588
Professor Trevor Cox. Professor of Acoustic Engineering. University of Salford : http://www.salford.ac.uk/computing-science-engineering/cse-academics/trevor-cox
Inchindown Oil Tanks. Atlas Obscura : https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/inchindown-oil-tanks
How architecture helped music evolve David Byrne. Ted Talks : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8kcnU-uZw
David Byrne official website. How Music Works : http://davidbyrne.com/explore/how-music-works
Brazilian drum street music video. Rafa Navarro. YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQLvGghaDbE
Choir of New College/Canterbury Cathedral Choir - Tallis. treblechoir99. YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIbZCZafNE
Allan Kilpatrick RCAHMS. MP3 of Tour. Forestry Commission Scotland : https://scotland.forestry.gov.uk/activities/heritage/world-war-two/world-war-two-sites/inchindown-oil-storage-tanks
The Sound Blog by Prof Trevor Cox. "Playing the saxophone in the Inchindown Oil Tanks" : https://acousticengineering.wordpress.com/tag/inchindown-oil-tanks/
Videos and photographs are my own unless otherwise stated.
