A few years ago I did a new soundtrack for 2 films by Chris Marker. I’ve always liked the work and wanted to return to it, so when we were planning the Spirit of Gravity 21st birthday party at The Rose Hill I thought I’d give it another try.
The show went well – not just for me, all the sets where brilliant, especially ones by ex-Asian Dub Foundation bassist Dhangsa, Fallow, and Lara Rix-Martin aka Meemo Comma. I got a great recording of my set courtesy of Abraham Moughrabi and put it on my Bandcamp page with a lovely sleeve designed by Bea, my daughter, who I also collaborated with on Four Walks at Old Chapel.
The Rose Hill is a venue, studio complex and creative hub run by musicians and artists and is one of my favourite venues to play at. Before its current incarnation it was pub I used to hang out in with my mate Matt before watching the football.
My friend Andrew Greaves and I had an idea for a work called Inside journeys which would explore the history and physical presence of a space and we approached The Rose Hill to see if they would be interested. We were delighted when they said they where, and even more delighted when they asked us if we would like to be part of their residency programme.
The audio sources and ideas for Inside journeys will be sourced by making recordings in the space of small solo performances, recordings of soundings of objects we find, and field recordings made over the course of the residency. We will also be sourcing historical recordings and any kind of sound ephemera we can lay our hands on, including sheet music relevant to the space and archive recordings. The residency will culminate in a performance of the work on Thursday November 17th 2022.
The Safehouse collective are a group of improvising musicians based in and around Brighton. They’ve been putting on shows of freely improvised music for many years and I was very pleased to be asked to take part in a the online wildcard sessions project they started during lockdown.
They randomly put people in groups of three and each trio shares files to make a new piece of improvised music. I got involved in session 5 and was really please when Corey Mwamba played a track I was on during his Freeness show on BBC Radio 3.
Session 6 saw me working alongside Paul Dalloway & Rachel Cohen, Dave Allen & Jamie Clark, and Jane Perkins & Matt Finucane. You can hear all 28 tracks here:
A big thank you to Dave Allen and Gus Garside for organising it.
I’ve been working out a new live setup using Automatism on my laptop, a collection of effects pedals and a contact mic’d metal tray + various objects.
I’ve played 3 shows since venues started opening up again. The first was Spirit of Gravity in October, second was with James O’Sullivan as Muster at the 100 Years Gallery in London with the excellent Shark Calmer, and finally at Splitting the Atom in Brighton.
It felt great to be playing live again, and it was good to hear the new setup through a big pa when I’ve been listening to everything on studio monitors and headphones for the last 18 months!
Thats it for 2021. I’ve released 2 albums during the pandemic, re-designed my live set up, and used it 3 times at live shows. Not bad really.
Four walks at Old Chapel got its fair share of attention. It got played on the radio and had a few reviews, all of which were really positive. Including, I think, this one from Blow Up, an Italian music magazine, although I haven’t had a proper translation yet and it does mention Deliveroo so who knows. That is Bob on the cover so I’m in good company.
It is a most enjoyable release, of musique concrète proportions, but Powell created something quite playful. It is not about some strict rules of composition, nor does it rely too much on granular synthesis as his more serious peers would do. With Powell’s version we hear the field recordings as they were when committed to tape, we hear the cracking and rubbing upon objects, and we encounter small transformations of this, set in a more performance setting, which adds a delicate live electronics feeling to the music.
Graham Dunning played a track on his show on NTS which I was very pleased about, I had some US college radio play, Radio 3 in Spain layed a track on a late night mix, and I was supported by many friends in the UK, including Spirit of Gravity, Lost Property, and Space is the Place.
_am_ by Muster got a few good reviews and plays and we’ve sold some copies but there are plenty more available. Here’s a review by John Eyles in All About Jazz.
Heard blindfolded, one would not immediately say that the music was produced by two players, as the duo produce a rich soundscape full of variety and interest.
Given the abstract nature of my work I don’t expect lots of plays and reviews, but when I’ve spent a couple of years on a project its good to think that other people will be able to hear it.
We’ve been visiting Old Chapel Farm, near Llanidloes, since 2011 and its a special place for all of us. Fran and Kevin, who run the farm, have become friends, and people whose commitment to a way of living we have the utmost respect for. This is how they describe what they are trying to do:
At Old Chapel Farm we endeavour to live close to the land – growing our food, tending livestock, practising ancient crafts, living together, celebrating the seasons in their passing.
On our trip in 2018 my daughter Bea and I collected objects we found around the site and gathered them together in a straw bale hut suspended over a stream in a wooded valley which the farm’s owners made available for us to use. We recorded small performances with them, brushing, scraping and rubbing them to produce a wide range of intimate sounds. We also made field recordings around the site, including using a piano which had been exposed to the elements for some time.
Back in the studio in Brighton, I arranged the recorded sounds into a new work. I wanted to try and communicate some of the mystery and revelation I’ve experienced on my visits, and the connections I feel with the land and people I encounter when I visit the farm.
I’m pleased that Crónica agreed to release the work, and Miguel Carvalhais from the label did a brilliant job mastering it and making a sleeve. It will be released on May 11th as a limited edition cassette, and is available now on pre-order.
Absolutely delighted that the new Muster album is out in the world! _am_ was partly recorded at the excellent Horse Improv Club in 2019, back when we were still able to do gigs, and partly recorded during the pandemic via a series of tape swaps. Paul Khimasia Morgan was kind enough to put it on Slightly Off Kilter as a download, and its also available as a CD in a beautiful hand screen printed sleeve designed and made by Sito Press.
The last track is the Horse recording and was taped live by Saint Austral Sound. The remaining tracks are the product of a distance collaboration during lockdown with each of us submitting an improvised track which the other digested over successive listens before recording a response. The two tracks were then mixed together and edited.
A while ago I posted about the installation by @c which I contributed some small sounds to. The show was organised as part of Porto based label Crónica’s 15th anniversary and I got a booklet and cassette documenting the exhibition in the post on Wednesday.
There are two more releases coming up. Four walks at Old Chapel is a record of visits to a favourite spot in Wales, and is released on Crónica, They released At Cuckmere and I’m really pleased to be working with them again!
_am_ is the second album by Muster, the duo I formed with guitarist James O’Sullivan, and was during before and during the global pandemic.
This Sunday 10th January at 8pm is the next Splitting the Atom which I’ve been fortunate to have played at many times, and will be streamed on Twitch here https://www.twitch.tv/lostpropertycollective
I’m really pleased to say that the album I recorded with guitarist James O’Sullivan as improv duo Muster is out today. Find a City to Live In is on Invisible City records for streaming, download, or as a limited run cassette.
To make this album we swapped solo recordings and made live responses to each other’s work. James listened to each track multiple times, then recorded a live response, I listened to the track once and made a live score to work from when I made a recording.
The resulting tracks were mixed in London and Brighton, and mastered by Mark Beazley. The beautiful cover art is by Alexandra Hobson.
About two years ago my friend and fellow sound artist Henry Collins (ex Shitmat) got in touch about a project he was working on with KIKS/Gfr collecting field recordings of fridges. As there have been plenty of times late at night when I’ve sat in my kitchen listening to the appliances singing to me, I made a recording and sent it off.
It took a couple of years but the album is out and comes as a download with a lovely CAD print of a fridge’s cooling system. Its great to be in the illustrious company of Graham Dunning, Leslie Deere, and Simon Whetham. Thanks to Henry, and Ben at KIKS/Gfr, who is donating the profits to a foodbank in Nottingham.
