Collapsing The Wave Function

Collapsing the Wave Function is the second ‘studio’ album by wor_kspace, the artist profile of Glasgow songwriter and producer, former Teenage Fanclub & BMX Bandits member, Finlay Macdonald. There has also been an ambient-drone album (Shipping, 2022) and a midwinter-festival album (Polymas, 2023). This is the second release on the Glass Modern label. wor_kspace began in 2020 as a lock-down project in the months where one of the few ways to make music was at home with a computer and electronics. In the 5 years since, as we have re-emerged from our cocoons and back into the ‘real world’, so too has the music of wor_kspace. Software synths have become analogue hardware. Real circuit boards produce palpable emotion generated by actual voltage. Sampled guitars have become mic’d-up, amped-up Fender Stratocaster with actual strings causing reverb from actual springs. The sample-accurate computergenerated clock has given way to a looser, less predictable analogue sequencer. Two elements remain at the core: The metronomic, meditative, motorik rhythm, and the songs. The beats bring you back to the present moment and, the songs express worldly desires and experiences – less opaque than before – though misty in parts. And so, with this album, Finlay is Collapsing the Wave Function, a key phenomenon in quantum theory that explains how quantum systems transition from a probabilistic, wave-like state to a single, classical outcome. It is when the spell is made flesh. An idea, an emotion is charged and somehow emerges as an event on the material plane. You might call it magick. We call it music.