The first manifestation of this composition was a one-hour livestream, performed as part of the hiberNATION Festival in 2020, after which the piece was refined and condensed into a 13-minute standalone electronic piece. 

 

Lament is an anxious meditation on the future possibilities for environmentally sustainable public transport systems, given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the decline in public transport users, the pressure on staff and infrastructure and the evidence that Australian government stimulus policies are geared, overwhelmingly, towards the private sector.

 

The soundscape is comprised of manipulated field recordings of empty train stations, as well as samples of train announcers, passenger chatter and rural freight trains.