and we howled to the sun

And we howled to the sun is a setting of a poem I wrote after spending a languid summer day at an emerald coloured lake in the Columbia Valley of the Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia (BC). That day, June 30, 2021, was made languid by 44 degree Celsius temperatures brought on by the heat dome that caused the entire town of Lytton, BC to burn to the ground in a matter of hours at the exact time we were at the lake. I wished to capture the essence of the soundscape of this surreal place in my piece, and so included sound effects for the singers to produce such as the call of a seagull, percussive sibilant tones to evoke the spray of the water, oscillating figures in the bass to mimic the rippling of waves, and sustained pitches to create a shimmering natural reverb that is evocative of the heat haze that could be seen everywhere that day.