And bang! Just like that Degree Show 2012 starts to encroach like a gigantic stressy spectre.

I expect I’ll have quite a lot of chat on this in the coming months but here’s the latest piece that’s nearing some sort of completion (although there are still quite a few physical details to work out).

I’ve been looking for an excuse to tinker with what is (to me at least) one of the most aesthetically pleasing mysteries of the 20th century, the Numbers Station. Given the opportunity to write some obscure prose, make an approximation of a one-time Vernam Cipher, transcode it and then use modular synthesis to build a homage to the beautiful world of shortwave radio, I was pretty much as close to being in my element as I’ve been in a long time.

The Numbers At The Threshold exists as a liminal piece, a manifest of the ‘bridge of light’ that’s been troubling me for some time – a means of passage between external and internal space, the collision of different realities. The piece will be installed near the entrance of my degree show as a mark of the subconscious crossing over point between the realms of internal and external space and will play on a constant loop.

The full text will also appear alongside the transmission with a view to highlighting the temporal disparity between message and receipt, a willful obscuration of content.

The Numbers At The Threshold by D.Fyans

Just as a little nod to both the mental and geographical relevance, the melody at the start is a version of  The Associates – Party Fears Two.

Special thanks to the wonderful and talented Uschi for generously offering her voice for me to put words (or numbers) into. Go and check out her soundcloud, she good.

More to come soon I’d imagine.

D

Friday 20th January will see the premiere performance of my new piece ‘Marconi’s Shipwreck’ at Brighton’s The Outer Church alongside a live sets by fellow Broken20 luminaries TVO and John Cohen with the inimitable Production Unit undertaking DJ duties. There’s even a nasty rumour flying around that me and TVO might embark on a little bit of live collaborative improv [citation needed] although I suspect that will be largely reliant on how severely we’ve fallen out on the epic drive down to brighton. There will also be a special ultra limited edition 3″ CD given away to the first 25 people through the door featuring exclusive tracks by the artists present so completists might want to get down early (although we’ll also be giving everyone that attends a download code).

Here’s a little taster of what to expect. The visuals were created using an old B&W TV (thanks Clark), a projector and video camera setup in a variety of recursive feedback loops. There’s a bit more conjecture around it but I’ll save that for another day.

Marconi’s Shipwreck will be released later in Q1 on DVD and digitally on Broken20. More details once they are firmed up but in the meantime, The Outer Church seems like the only way to get in early.

Hope to see you there.

D

It’s been a busy little spell since my last post with various bits and pieces and some interesting conjecture.

Christmas Assessment rolled around a little too soon again, this time, instead of our previous mode of assessment where we had 10 minutes to stand up and present and chat about work infront of a room full of people (which was actually pretty useful in terms of scaring you into better self belief/bullshitability), we’ve moved over to the Fine Art method where we set up our work and studio space and then are expelled from the studio for a week while the panel judge.

You can see more of the space here and the digital manifest of the works here.

Due to the assessment, I’ve been under house arrest for the last week, and as the dissertation rolls ever on towards its dreadful conclusion, it’s been a little chink of light tuning into the radioCona stream. My excessively long process driven piece ‘The Persistence of Decay’ was picked up by two of the curators, Tevž Logar of the ŠKUC Gallery in Slovenia and Ilari Valbonesi from ROMA Radio Art Fair so appears in both the Endeavours of Sound and Ultra Disco section of the exhbition.

Something about the self imposed house arrest/dislocation from my studio sends me to Xavier De Maistre’s mental travels and to pondering the ideas of refugee status and freedom through one’s art. I have a rather romantic concept of my disembodied work, freed from the constraints of its host, resonating around the radio spectrum on Slovenian FM radio,  my sounds reaching out from the antennae into its surroundings, in search of a willing receiver. I also can’t help but wonder how many people might stumble across it on their car stereo and trying to work out whether the broadcast is faulty, a broken transmission (anyone that knows me will probably know how nice it is to use two of my favourite words contemporaneously).

Here’s a little bit of chat about the piece hijacked from the stream.

click on the image to go to the radioCona site, the live stream is on a player on the right of the page.

In a marathon design stint, last Monday i resolved to pull an entire 24 page issue of Satellite Zine out of the ether, there seems to be some snag with issue 05 being available on the official site so I thought I’d just pop a sneaky pdf of it here for anyone reading this that fancies a look/read, as usual I’ve written some fairly sideways text pieces too, one of them is obvious (as it’s got my name on it, the other one, perhaps not so).

Finally (i really should update this more often so that I don’t have to do these massive rambly posts), I’m going to be performing another trumpet and pedals improv set (I know! It seems to be turning into a habit or something!) on Tuesday 13h December at Work in Progress, an exhibition of 4th year Fine Art, TBA and APCP works. I should be performing around half 7. The facebook page for it is here. Below is just a little recording of the shape things have been taking lately.

An Invocation To Kill The Buddha by Erstlaub

D

A little round up of this week’s activities (the ones that haven’t included the persistent state of horrible meltdown anyway).

I’ve put together a sub-site for my some pieces of art that I’ve been working on over the last few months. You can go and have a poke around at it here. It’s technically still a work in progress but it’s operational for now etc.

This week has also seen me being suitably gloomy to undertake the writing of new material for some live shows which I’ve got in the pipeline next year. At the moment it appears to be swinging wildly between some fairly harsh textural noise and stuff that seems to be giving a little bit of a nod to the grand old days of Mille Plateaux and the like. Who knows, I’ll just have to see what sort of shape the whole thing ends up being.

Crashing Sideways In Slow Motion by Erstlaub

A Last Grain of Hope Crushed Underfoot by Erstlaub

A Closed Circuit Pretending To Be Human by Erstlaub

Other than that it’s been trumpet and pedals most of the way as I’m playing in Drouthy’s in Dundee on the 17th November and sitting with my SAD lamp on in an attempt to round off some of the jagged edges of what’s already manifesting as a difficult winter.

D

Having finally reached a stage of absolute frustration and annoyance at the Situationists from somewhere in the midst of my dissertation, I decided to make use of the whole ‘know thy enemy’ chat and throw myself in head first. I guess I’m more used to the derive when it comes to psychogeography so I decided to set myself up a little game of chance.

I decided on a duration of 1 hour to start things off. Entertainingly, within about 4 coin tosses, I’d found myself very close to my house, being directed up what I can only describe as an arcade that I’ve never noticed before. The part of my brain that’s recently been obsessed with Benjamin’s Arcades Project found this amusing.

Here are the results, it dawns on me that I didn’t record a few instances where chance dictated that I go straight ahead instead of turning so the figures are slightly off I guess. More to think about for the next game.

I plotted out the route I’d been led down (above) and put together a little flash film of the journey (below). There were a few interesting discoveries along the way that I may write about at some point and there are a few possible pieces of work that may or may not arise from the game. You can take a look at a few more bits (more to follow) on flickr. I’d say it was quite enjoyable but I think it could be improved with more time to poke around, I felt a little against the clock having set myself a limit of one hour. Time permitting I’ll hopefully give it another go with some modifiers thrown in.

D

A selection of updates from the last week or so.

I’m really pleased to announce that my epic 2 and a bit hour tape process piece “The Persistence of Decay” has been selected for inclusion in radioCona’s Radio Art Space. A Slovenian exhibition of audio work which will be presented both in gallery spaces and as an FM broadcast from the 7th to the 15th of December. More information on the event is here if you can’t wait and want your very own copy of The Persistence of Decay, well, you can get the whole thing, along with a bit of chat about the process here.

And now, a trio of pieces made in the last week across some quite different projects.

First up is Heavy listing, the first proper sketch for what I think will for the basis for a live performance in Brighton in January next year and may beccome a new album (possibly titled Marconi’s Shipwreck but I’m not entirely sure yet).
Heavy Listing by Erstlaub

Next is a recording of a practice for one of my occasional and fairly chaotic trumpet and pedal improvisations. I’ll be doing something along the lines of this live at Drouthy’s in Dundee on the 17th of November. It should be a pretty interesting night, I’ll probably post about it again nearer the time.
131011 by Erstlaub

Finally, a very personal audio treatment piece I made today. There’s an allusion towards what it’s about in the following description

“Song and music imprint themselves on our intrinsic sense of identity. This piece explores the idea of a song with very personal connection becoming trapped in the liminal space where memory and self start to break down. The underlying structure remains but nuance and texture are lost.”

I’ll leave it at that for now as it’s still a bit raw.
The River Cocytus Boat Song by D.Fyans

Hello, hello, is this thing on?

Oh never mind

D

Dundee Sequence

A few short works of concrete poetry derived (dérived?) from psychogeographic ponderings based on local sites of resonance for me. The first echoes the profile of the Law Hill, the second, a strut of the Tay Road Bridge, the third traces the banks of the Tay Estuary.

Ghosts

CCTV and surveillance culture have become an underlying trope of the 21st Century. With this increased level of observation, we somehow become more annonymous. Blurred faces get lost in the crowd, actions stripped of context, the observer imparts their own narratives on the cast of the endless, unedited stream.

Caught on tape, our actions repeat, purpose forgotten, in an endless cry to the gods of the 21st Century

D

Just a little post of a couple of recent things that I’ve not put up here yet.

First up is a soundpiece I made, I guess sitting somewhere between the old days of Mille Plateux and current wanderings towards broken techno.

Nostalghia by Erstlaub

Then moving even closer to techno, I produced my first remix in years and years. It’s based on a forthcoming Broken20 release by Nanorhytmn, it’ll probably appear in the BrokenZero free remix release that we’re putting out to partner the full thing.

Nanorhythm – Amniotic Haze (Erstlaub Dub) by Erstlaub

Finally, a total departure, a little visual haiku. I’d recently been to an artist talk by Ken Cockburn about he and Alec Finlay’s The Road North project which helped me tie together a few loose ends that had been floating around in my head for a few weeks. Mirroring the profile of the Law with content relating to explorations recently undertaken.

Lots coming up in the next few weeks from Broken20.

Also, I just saw Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia at the DCA. Amazing! Possibly the best contemporary film I’ve seen since his Antichrist which had a similarly profound impact. Can’t recommend enough.

Cheers also to all the people at the Shared Imagination Symposium this week for some interesting talks and ideas and for at least pretending to enjoy Gair and I’s Atom Town themed ‘performance lecture’.

D

This coming Thursday, I’ll be taking part in the Shared Imagination symposium at the DCA, Dundee,  providing sonic accompaniment in what’s been dubbed a ‘performative lecture’ alongside Gair Dunlop (who was recently referenced in an NTC piece by Alexander) who will be talking enigmatically about some of his experiences around Atom Town (which will be screened in the evening, full details at the shared imagination link).

I’m particularly looking forward to the keynote by Dr. Rob La Frenais, Senior Curator at Arts Catalyst , London an ever interesting and exciting organisation which I had the pleasure to perform at in the summer.

Places are very limited but you can attend by emailing exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk to enquire about spaces. The evening performance by Pernille Spence and the screening of Atom Town are open to all 6pm – 8.30pm, Thursday October 6th at Centrespace, DCA, Dundee.

D

In the name of drawing a line under a series of investigations and extrapolations during July/August, I’ve put together a 39 minute track/album of textural soundwork which is available as a free download.