Music Without Names

A cramped tape studio in London on a frozen January night, light from an angled desk lamp, on a felt-covered table a dark tarnished bronze bell on a rusty iron bracket, a chrome bracket with a red handle and a felt pad, a wide spiral of steel wire on a brass dish, a ring of many small golden brass discs strung on wire, two small tin cymbals, two bamboo sticks with black balls, a white chopstick painted in coloured bands, beside them a large grey tape recorder with turning reels, a woman's hands laying a strip of brown tape across a metal splicing block and cutting it with a single-edged blade.