Given its title and source material—field recordings of oil-industry pumpjacks—one might suspect that Scott Smallwood’s given to earth in dark blood is some kind of ecopolitical statement. And given that Smallwood is an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, one might expect his statement to be about the ecologically damaging extraction of oil from the tarsands of his adopted province.

The truth, however, is considerably more complex. Yes, the U.S.–born Smallwood has ecological concerns, and has even experimented with solar-powered devices as a means of taking electronic music off the grid. But given to earth in dark blood—written for percussion, violin, cello, clarinet, and vibraphone—just might have more to do with his childhood love of heavy machinery than his adult worries about the end of oil.

“I grew up in Colorado, but I’m originally from Texas,” the composer says in a telephone call from his Edmonton home. “So when I was a young kid we used to travel a lot to see relatives back in Texas, and we usually did that in the car. On the road we’d go right through oil country, where a lot of those pumpjacks are located, and I just remember as a kid being really drawn to them, for some reason. I’m sure my parents explained to me what they were for, but I always thought they looked like little animals out in the distance, bobbing their heads up and down. So I was intrigued by them, and always wondered what they sounded like.”

It took some time for Smallwood to satisfy his curiosity, but once he did he discovered that these oddly animated machines were also surprisingly musical. “The thing about the pumpjacks is that they all have very different sounds,” he stresses. “They’re all very rhythmic, but the weather and the elements cause them all to develop their own individual character, which is interesting.

“I vividly remember thinking, as I was listening to one of them, how much it sounded like a group of acoustic instruments,” he continues. “And then later, when I was listening back to the recordings, there were a couple in particular that seemed to lend themselves to the idea of orchestration. So I started extracting sounds from those recordings, using my ears but also using some analysis software to help me locate specific pitches and rhythmic features, and I started to develop a vocabulary for a group of instruments. From there, I wrote a couple of pieces, including the one that’s going to be played in Vancouver.”

Given to earth in dark blood’s title, he adds, came later, and was borrowed from the writer and Iraq War veteran Brian Turner’s poem Kirkuk Oilfield, 1927. In Turner’s text, an old Iraqi describes life “on the roof of Hell”, and compares drilling for oil to tapping “a vein/deep in the skull of God”. The idea of oil as a living substance resonated with Smallwood, who had already incorporated First Nations drum patterns into his score.

“I found myself thinking about the land, and what it was like before we were there, and the sort of sacred nature of it,” he says. “So I think some of that came into play, too.”

Bolstering the environmental subtext of this exceptionally atmospheric piece of music is that it’s going to be performed at UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, as part of Vancouver New Music’s Sound Space Architecture concert. (Also on the bill are works by Howard Bashaw, John Oswald, and Jordan Nobles.) The event focuses on music that can exploit the acoustic properties of the venue’s six-story atrium, which fits in nicely with Smallwood’s own interest in site-specific sound.

“This year, I was able to go on-site at Shell’s Scotford refinery and make a bunch of recordings,” he says. “The sounds that are coming out of that have been terrifying but also weirdly womblike, and that’s been kind of intriguing. It’s just a whole other level of shock and awe.”