Somethings Old/Somethings New

A couple of free to download, 40ish minute albums (click on the images to go to the download page) from me along with a couple of new pieces for streaming.

First up, available in its entirety for the first time is Atom Town.

Inspired by retro-futurist aesthetics of the post-atomic age, built as a requiem to forgotten dreams of old technology, the ghosts of futures passed. A piece originally commissioned for screenings of Gair Dunlop’s Atom Town film. It was performed in July 2011 at Arts Catalyst, London alongside a reading by Ken Hollings and at the DCA Dundee at the Shared Imagination Symposium in October 2011.

Then comes Unfolding inwards.

A collated series of pieces written and produced in July/August 2011, thematically constructed as a series of textural sound sculptures portrayed by a fictional broken tape machine focussing on ideas of surface noise, mechanical friction and failing media. The pieces were written and performed using a Nord G2 Modular Synthesizer and recorded/collated in Reaper with no additional processing, effects or editing.

And then a couple of newer pieces from the last week or so, an aesthetic continuation of the mental space staked out with Unfolding.

Always Sinking by Erstlaub

Still Wearing Out by Erstlaub

I’d say happy listening, but I think we both know it’d be in vain.

D

Spanning

Just a little roundup of random bits and pieces from the last week or so. It’s been a pretty taxing with my body both mentally and physcially deciding to rebel but such is the shape of things and from the ashes blah blah blah.

So today’s major excitement is the keystone of a piece (that’s sort of an accidental pun I suppose) falling into place. In an incredibly brief summary, my degree show is along the lines of highlighting the validity of the internal spaces we build and carry around within us. For as long as the concept has been brewing (a year or so), I’ve had this phrase looping round in my head “you must build a bridge of light”, now I’ve done a few pieces about bridges in the past and find them a generally fascinating non-place anyway but today, after months of trying to work out how to realise the metaphor and a few pieces that conceptually work but are physically incredibly difficult, it all dropped into place. Make the metaphor literal, actually build a bridge out of light. It seems pretty obvious when written down but, as I expect Iain Sinclair has never said in his entire life, “sometimes you just can’t see the motorway for looking at the tarmac” (will this phrase catch on?).

This is a very early iteration and due to lack of space, long enough cables and other issues it’s just my projector propped up at an awful angle projecting onto my fairly horrible carpet. I think in its final form it’ll become a concrete prose poem of sorts projected down into the entrance/threshold of my exhibition space, the visitors literally crossing the bridge made of light (how that took me so long to figure out I’ll never know).

Bridge 1

bridge2

This week I also managed to write up a new piece On Confessions Of Breath for the NTC regarding some thoughts on recent improv. interventions, another few bits of writing are dragging themselves out of my head at ridiculously sluggish speed and I’ve also, as a result of listening a bit too much to the amazing Soul Jazz – Voodoo drums compilation been considering the use of electronics as a ritual mechanism, audio of the first contact below.

Zaraguin by Erstlaub


(edit.) I forgot about this as well, a mixed media piece for videotape, acetate and digital print. I’m considering making a little series of them which I’d be happy enough to sell at degree show but we’ll wait and see.

AOM1

AOM2

Anyway, that’s all for now, until the next transmission, I should point you towards the excellent Outer Church Community Broadcast #1 with all round stand up guy Joe Stannard only in conversation with Warren Freaking Ellis and Penny Red and also go and look at the website of The Fife Psychogeographical Collective who I’ve only recently come across but am very, very intrigued by, some excellent pieces of work there. Anyway, back to the crushing doom of Sebald’s Rings of Saturn for me.

D