The Old
January 4, 2013
Here’s a 1983 recording, second track on the 6th At Sea release. Blur Blur was a duo but I can’t get a callback from the other as he’s now a famous DJ. He did the drumming, I did the processing, with tapes and tape loops.
This was on a cassette sold for one pound plus a stamped addressed envelope, I think we were both 17.
I like it!
19 – The Adams Life Insurance Company
March 1, 2011
A new little piece using multiple processed layers from a 1970s insurance sales cassette. The combined sound is guttural, shamanic (to my ears). Control systems are theatre, and we seem to respond to the same things in the same way, time and time again, regardless of whether it’s politics, religion or advertising. I don’t mean the language, I mean the TONES.
18 – Spunk
March 1, 2011
I’d completely forgotten about this, it was part of a CD EP called “The Philip Glass Mens’ Room” which no-one bought in 2004, it’s unlike anything I’ve done before or since which may be for the best. I think I was trying to make 16th century polyphony spunky, in a Stevie Wonder kind of way and with all the melodies combined inside of a tiny electric piano-shaped space like early Pippa Glass. I had not quite mastered working with digital instruments at this point that’s for sure, but hearing it again I like it, so it is here.
17 – Cubic Sentient Ballroom
February 2, 2011
It’s a serious mangling /mauling of Grieg’s “Nocturne” from two different 78 records from the 1920s. I wanted to create a disquieting sense of “otherness”.
16 – Mysterybear: Apocalypse Garage #2 Remix
February 2, 2011
15 – A Sakha Shaman Hears His Ancestors Whilst Travelling
January 11, 2011
4 layers of stretched, retuned and edited Russian mouth harp (“The Vargan”). It does what it says on the tin. The Sakha Republic is a quite enormous chunk of Russia, they used to be nomadic herders.
The (as usual) rather factual description does not describe the end result (this is my attempt at marketing). I don’t believe in god but I’d like to make music that sounds like the voice of a god.
YouTube Video Channel Now Online!
July 21, 2010
Set up to share performances of the works I’ve created with choreographer John Utans.
14 – Night Falls Fast Finally
April 21, 2010
Here are all the six parts of “Night Falls Fast”, it’s as far as I can go without a real orchestra. Very limiting and there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in this piece. Why don’t I work with a real orchestra? Simple, I’m just hugely afraid that I can’t do it. I’ll get over it because I need to.
13 – Hong Kong Funfair
April 21, 2010
I once put an album out which was largely pretty terrible. I tried to avoid all of the choices that I would normally make and force myself to do things differently. The album cannot be named for reasons of personal pride, but after randomly listening to this track I found I that I rather liked it.
Some words of warning: this is not a slow, meditative, calming minimalist piece. It’s the opposite. I have future plans for maximalism but this wasn’t part of it.
So, it’s a field recording of my trip to a Hong Kong Funfair with my friends (and ex-partner), edited, layered up over the course of three years with appropriately paced techno beats, adding the magic of occasional strings to provide a nice juxtaposition (the strings are kind of slapdash, I wanted to surprise myself) and finally throwing the whole thing into reverse for good measure.
It’s supposed to sound like a funfair, perhaps with the addition of some serious drugs.
Best listened to through headphones.
12 – Night Falls Fast 2009
December 13, 2009
Here’s Night Falls Fast, originally for the Milwaukee Ballet and choreographer John Utans in 2005 in 5 movements… this new version revises movements 1 + 2, misses out the rest and adds a new 6th (3rd for this piece) movement… had a premier in Hong Kong a few weeks back and will be performed in Monaco in April 2010. It’s a single MP3 with 3 movements, don’t get fooled by silence.
