Not blogged for a little while but I finally got around to uploading the video of me performing Roses Made of Time which I did back in November to Vimeo.
Not much else to report at present apart from this slightly psychotic flash sketch which is the first attempt to realise chunks of a puzzle that seems to have begun to reveal itself to me. I’ve no idea what this is or why but as more things present themselves, hopefully their purpose will become more apparent.
Another artschool project to post up here. If you follow the link, it explains the brief and my concept. It is in flash (as per the brief) so apologies to the iPhone peoples as it won’t work.
The more eagle eyed/die-hard among you might have already picked up the rather good 2010 Mixtape from Highpoint Lowlife which features some greatness by some of my favourite musicians such as Erik XVI (with TVO on the dub), some ghostly anti-wobble from Production Unit, some of Mandelbrot’s new noisy as fuck guitar histrionics and the enigmatic legend that is 10-20, everytime I hear new stuff by him it just blows me away, awesome. Oh yeah, there’s also a little bit of new Erstlaub on there which must mean……
Yep, consider this announced! Sleepwalking into the Underworld will be coming out on Highpoint Lowlife this year, plans at present are to do a DVDr release with the full visuals but we still have a few things to iron out before I can say for certain. You’ll know more when I do.
Just a little (slightly late) note to thank everyone who came out to see me at Hidden Door the other week. Apologies if I didn’t really get to speak to you or you thought I was a bit heavy on the scowls, I do tend to have to get a bit too much mentally “into character” sometimes for it to all come together and, I think I managed to pull it off. Word from the floor was I had a captivated audience of about 30 people or so locked in for most of the 40 minutes (including a couple of Sunday afternoon snoozers!).
Extra special thanks to Alastair Cook, amazingly nice man, new friend and something of a renaissance man for dragging me out of inactivity and asking me to take part, it spurred me on to create a whole new piece especially for it. It was genuinely moving to hear about his personal experience with my music, it’s the sort of thing that actually makes it feel like it’s all worth it. His Malin set was absolutely wonderous, bass heavy, deep, dark, as soon as he started playing, I realised why we’d been getting on so well. He has an exhibition of his beautiful landscape photography on display at the moment in Sutherland, go see it if you can.
A rather nice review of the Sunday afternoon activities over at the enjoyably frank and generally well informed Que Belle Epoque blog.
“This was intended to be a review of the entire extensive programme at the Hidden Door Art Festival this weekend in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, due to a comical projectile vomiting bug (it wasn‚Äôt comical at the time, but it was of the variety that is generally used to comical effect) I only made it down for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. However, I did still manage to catch one of the main reasons for my interest in the event, an Edinburgh debut from Erstlaub, who was showing a new live set.
Prior to Erstlaub it also worth mentioning Alastair Cook’s new Malin project; although I only caught the second half due to some last-minute programme changes. In that short space of time he managed to summon sufficient bass-y growl to send my girlfriend (who had endured the same vomiting affliction) into the bowel-comforting shelter of the poetry room. Malin matched his music to a variety of collected visual recordings, including the familiar view along the East Coast Mainline, focus shifting between the dirty GNER windows and the passing landscape, with the occasional fleeting glimpses of the sea. This worked well with the music, a gentle static patchwork interwoven with passing interludes of children speaking, guitar melodies, hushed vocals and heartier (gut-wrenching?) bass drones. The result was a beautiful scrapbook of field recordings and electronic manipulation. A man of numerous talent, as well as commissioning and curating a number of artists for the event (including Erstlaub), Al has an exhibition of his photography of Sutherland and Caithness opening next week in Helmsdale.
After a wander around the rest of the artwork I returned to the basement for Erstlaub’s set. Dave Fyans, the artist/creator of Erstlaub, describes his music as ‘Scottish drone-based miserablism’ which is enough to pique my interest, a bit of dour ambiance is always lovely on a Sunday afternoon. However this description probably does something of a disservice to his music, which is much more emotionally complex.
He performed a new piece called ‘Sleepwalking Into The Underworld‘, accompanied by a series of wintry images of forests and streams. The volume and depth of the noise he managed to create were difficult to associate with the laptop and array of electronic devices set out on the table before him. These were noises you would associate with much larger entities; the creaking of a forest at the beginning of a storm, wind ripping across a body of water, the hum of distant factories. It is all the more impressive that the sounds were entirely built from modular synthesis, without the help of samples or field recordings.
The set started with a low hum and a re-occurring whipping squall, soon followed by distant tribal drums emanating from deep within the monochrome forest. The drums reappeared later seemingly to mark shifts in the movement of noise as Fyans shepherded his sounds around the projected landscape. Frequencies continued to build and collide into great masses of physical noise; only towards the end of the set a confused and disoriented electronic gurgle appeared to remind you of the real source of the sound. His 40-minute set seemed to drift past very quickly indeed, leaving me to consider what actually constituted ‘natural’ sound.
Get more Erstlaub here, lots of treats to download including the excellent ‚ÄòIn Darkened Corners‚Äò EP. If you enjoy that look out for his releases on the Highpoint Lowlife label, amongst others.”
In addition to Malin, my other highlight of the festival was a brief performance by the poet JL Williams whose cutup verbal imagery and beautiful American/Scottish tonality cut through my performance anxiety and soothed and held me captive. We’ve briefly touched on the possibility of working together if the right project occurs, lets wait and see.
News coming soon on a reissue of a quite difficult to get album (due to being on a terrible label the first time) on MFR and a possible new release on HPLL to follow once my legal team have finished negotiations (ie. once I get my finger out and reply to some emails/send some discs places).
“What do you play?, “Can I dance to it?”, “what else does it sound like?” are all things I’ve been asked recently and in the interest of trying to define quite what it is I do as Erstlaub, I’ve been doing a little bit of self-analysis which I thought might be interesting to record, it seems to have turned into part vanity writing/part manifesto/part pseudo-scifi-magic-psychotic conjecture.
Sound as a hypersigil
The pieces I make as Erstlaub are generally created as a response to real world ideas and emotions but the space that exists between this inspiration and the final output is more than just a straight “musical” process. Elements of musical theory, physics, maths play a part, as do the deeper concepts of chaos/pop magic, dimensionality within the omniverse and non-linear time. Most of the time, Erstlaub is a creative force from within, usually a focussing of a certain type of psychological energy, sometimes there is a less cogent process which is more akin to channelling an alternate reality persona rather than a conscious sequence of decision making.
The creative process involves taking an idea, feeling or element of will or intent and translating into sound by means of taking individual modular elements and focussing, refining and condensing them into self contained, autonomous systems, usually with an inbuilt “fail” system removing the technical purity and adding a more organic edge.¬†Larger pieces are then constructed out of a series of these small systems and again, several of these will be combined in sequence to create a narrative in the same way that sigils are formed and sequenced into more complex hypersigils.
As with all good chaos magic practice, there are rules within the system on which to base open excursions;
Sounds are only ever built from scratch using modular synthesis – no samples or field recordings should be used
No additional outboard processing should take place – bar the use of delay loops to mask audio dropouts on loading a new environment
There should be no midi sequencing or synchronisation
Pieces should be performed and recorded in one continuous take with no post editing (trimming ends and final mastering excepted)
The real power lies in the charging of these hypersigil constructs, when performed, this series of slightly chaotic systems, each built with very specific intent, start to resonate with the others, waves stack or phase, things start to beat against each other or harmonise. The construct becomes one solid, vibrating, continuous piece of energy – there are ebbs and flows, things come into focus before pulling away again, fire, water, earth and air elements shift against each other, ghosts, memories, feelings, secrets, doubts, all hang there in space, imprinted onto time, burning, a perpetual motion engine of pure crystalised will.
Pretty nuts eh? Come and see me play at Hidden Door on Sunday, 31st January downstairs in the Engine Room in the Bowery (due on at 4.40pm). I’ll be performing the brand new piece Sleepwalking Into The Underworld along with a 40 minute projection to accompany it. There’s a sneak preview in the previous post if you haven’t already seen it.
There’s some exciting news yet to post regarding¬†Sleepwalking but I’ll let you know once details are all firmed up.
I’m escaping out into the real world to subject members of the human race to a completely new set of bleeps and rumbles in a few weeks time. I’m playing in the afternoon of Sunday 31st January at the Hidden Door festival in Edinburgh (my first Edinburgh show actually).
The set and accompanying visuals were largely constructed in a pique of bleak mid-winterness so expect an even higher than normal noise/grumbling ratio. Here is a little preview to give you an idea of what to expect.
Please do come, it looks like it’s going to be a really interesting event, if you do, be nice to me eh?
<2009>Ghost Frequencies, Duncan of Jordanstone, Artschool, Belonging, Nikon D90, finishing seeing all of Tarkovsky’s films, being totally proud of my friends making babies/being pregnant, making more friends than I ever have before, Comicbooks/Graphic Novels, Kick-Ass, Knightfall, Infinite Crisis, Countdown to / Final Crisis, Battle for the Cowl, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Pop Magic, Sigils, Tarot, yet more Cycles of David Lynch, DCA in Dundee, Antichrist, Where the Wild Things Are, Alphaville, Le Mepris, Citizen Kane, Once Upon a Time in the West, La Jetee/Sans Solei, Dead Man, Watchmen, insomnia, Coil, Broadcast vs The Focus Group, Natural Snow Buildings, The XX, William Basinksi, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, PJ Harvey, Martial Canterel / Xeno and Oaklander, seeing Stars of the Lid live, letting go of some things, Macbook breaking, Xbox breaking, spending WAY too much money on the Warp 100 Box Set, Microkorg, Abandoned Buildings, decay, ruin, hospitals, castles, dark tunnels, Sailor Jerry, self doubt, The Art Bar, Gavin Bryars – Jesus Blood Never Failed Me, Final Cut, Pro-Tools, Meeting Sleazy/Seeing Threshold House Boys’ Choir live, Keeping a Google Calendar of all the Films I’ve Watched, Updating to Leopard, Lars Von Trier’s Riget (Kingdom), Being 30, Fife, Dundee, Glasgow, Hating every single idea I have about 3 weeks into the execution of it, getting lost in the woods, capturing time in three directions at once, magic realism, the fourth dimension, psychogeography, situationist international, feeling like you are about to burst into flames on a regular basis, The Moon and Serpernt, staying up til 6am drinking rum, dichotomies, being single, accrual of good karma, Psychoville, The Thick of It, Adam and joe, brain static, Wiretap, Perseid Meteors, Marvelling at The Universe. </2009>
The ever supportive Lend Me Your Ears site ran a nice little feature on me this week which you can see here. Julian also featured long term associate TVO this week here.
On TVO chat, his FACT top 10 got published here in which he namechecks Ghost Frequencies.
In less cool news, I got a lovely ukuelele for my Christmas so am considering giving up the drones in favour of some twee strumming action (not really, it is fun though).
Hope you are having good festive times and stuff, I’m still battling off a hefty dose of man-flu, feel free to forward me your sympathies //sadface.
Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies made the man-legend that is The Village Orchestra’s end of year honours list that he was asked to put together for FACT. I don’t think it’s officially posted yet keep em peeled for that. The podcasts are also well worth a punt, great site, good content, nice outlook on things. here
Also linked in with TVO, this month’s Wire magazine features a full page feature on the man along with a couple of my photo’s of him making this my first international published photo credit. Yayy.
Still dragging it’s phantom self around, a nice little review of Ghost Frequencies arose today on Sonomu courtesy of Steven Fruitman.
“This excellent work was inspired by a bit of quackery known as the ‚ÄùGanzfeld Procedure‚Äù in the field of parapsychology. A subject is blindfolded and equipped with a pair of headphones playing nothing but white and pink noise ‚Äì static. Out of this aural assault, it is hoped the subject will discern patterns, maybe even hear voices. Maybe even real voices from the past.
More than science, it sounds like a relative to Victorian fancies like fairy photography or Edison´s attempts to hear the voices of the dead via the radio, optimistic hopes that new technology might reveal previously hidden worlds, or at least reveal the otherwise hidden beings that share ours with us.
As music, however, Broadcasting on Ghost Frequencies sits four-square in the contempary field of drone music, which for all its different forms also wishes to put the listener in a contemplative mood, from which he or she will often hear things that are not really there. Or are, but very subtly so.
Erstlaub´s fifty-minute piece appears to be playing the role of the input – the static barrage – and the output Рthe shapes and colours the mind suggests might appear out of the the flat, prickly monotony. Because he certainly shows an intervening hand by creating sound events which rise and fade away, or are consumed by the greater drone, with regularlity.
In fact Dave Fyans of Perth, Scotland, the man behind the attractive monicker (”first leaves”), proves a very talented composer in a field where patience and taste, knowing just when to change the pitch, send in a reverberating spiral, or add a new thread to the weave of the main drone, is the mark of an artist.
It is really quite beautiful, balancing between both stark and lush in some inexplicable – paranormal? – manner.
Finally, I am pleased to be able to announce that I will be breaking cover for a rare live performance on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at the Bowery in Edinburgh as part of the very interesting looking Hidden Door Festival. They are in the process of updating their site so I’ll post more details and times as they are solidified. I will be playing an entirely new set (which I’m also in the process of making visuals for) which at the moment may or may not be floating around in my head with the title of “Sleepwalking into the Underworld” but I can’t be sure yet.
So, latest artschool shenanigans has been an audio project. Having never used ProTools before I threw myself at it and mostly got my head around the nuts and bolts, yeah it’s a bit funky sometimes with the way it deals with things but all in all, not a terrible bit of software. I picked up an Mbox 2 Mini which is a surprisingly solid little bit of kit considering its pricetag. It’s nice just to have a very portable, bus powered interface that can phantom power my AKG C1000s and handle a few ins and outs.
I decided that I should strive to try something well outside my usual methods of working so decided to go or pure audio collage give or take. Here’s a brief write up for it. I should point out that it’s entirely non-commercial and for educational purposes so if I stole a little bit of audio from you, please don’t sue me (Conet Project).
“The Horsemen Crept in at Midnight
an audio project by d.fyans (tbadf lvl2)
This is an audio piece produced in Pro-Tools using a variety of different sound sources to convey a narrative. A combination of offline processes and insert effects were used along with traditional editing techniques.
The piece is inspired by the Foley Art, ‘Threads’, ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ and Orson Welles ‘War of the Worlds’.
The concept is a short, imaginary documentary piece based around the idea of a nuclear bomb being dropped in the UK and after a period of time, nature enduring in the absence of human intervention.
Sources/Equipment
Equipment
Macbook Pro
Pro-Tools 8le
Mbox Mini 2
Piezo contact microphone
AKG C1000s Condenser microphone
Zoom H4 Portable Stereo Recorder
Nord Modular G2
Sources
Bottle top
Coins
Lighter
Hundreds + Thousands
A4 Paper
Computer Keyboard
Field recording taken at Dunino Den
Field recording of city ambience
Number Station recordings (found sound)
GMT ‘Pips’ from GMT Website (found sound)
Chimes of Big Ben (found sound)”
I can’t really say how I feel about this project. In terms of ‘sound art’ it’s less creative than my usual sound works. It was interesting to try and paint in a very literal narrative using a variety of sound, it seems to be something that I can handle quite comfortably but, in honesty I prefer to keep it more smoke and mirrors and abstract. We’ll see where this one goes I guess.
D
ps
If you made it this far down, well done, I decided to add in a little cutup rastery kinda vibe based on bits chopped in ProTools out of my daily commute, only cut, nothing else apart from the big mongy timestretch at the end, gotta love those mongy timestretches. It’s really just a wee sketchy thing.
