Erstlaub

So, today was red-letter day and I’m happy to be able to report that I am now the somewhat befuddled new owner of a first class honours degree in Time Based Art and Digital Film.

I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank everyone that’s been part of my life for the last few years, it’s been a weird old ride and the coming years, I’m sure have even stranger secrets to reveal. It is genuinely appreciated though.

Well done and thanks to everyone that I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with along the way at DJCAD, I hope your envelopes mirrored the passion and energy that you’ve put in (and if not, then hold onto the passion regardless). Extra shouts to Steven James Herd and Robbie Nolan on their firsts also, truly deserved gentlemen, proud to have served alongside you both.

Anyway, I’ll have some more useful chat at some point soon, in the meantime, please do come along to see the degree show, so much amazing work condensed into such a small space that it’s breathtaking. Open this Friday and runs until the following Sunday.

You can have a 2d, digital precursor of my show here. Please drop by, take in the work and I’ll be more than happy to have some chat if the desire takes you.

D

I’ve recently become quite engrossed in the idea of all the disparate information hanging in the ether of the Troposphere and have embarked on a series of improvised performances using radio receivers as source material.

This piece uses a small, battery powered 8 band shortwave radio, spirit folio notepad mixer, bugbrand microcrusher, big muff, holiest grail, re20, dd20 and RC20 pedals to layer and treat the incoming signals.

It’s an interesting departure from the usually obscenely tightly controlled modular constructs employed in my Erstlaub work, replacing purposefully built elements with pure chance.

Séance by D.Fyans

In other news, I spent an afternoon in the Artist Book archive down at the DCA on Thursday collecting source material to be used in the score for The Breath Between Marks. It’s really an amazing collection and I’m honoured to be given the opportunity to access such a rich resource of publications by so many fantastic artists. I’m in the process of breaking down material into score elements via a combination of processing and vectorising images so that I can lay them down. I’ll post up progress as is relevant.

D

I recently produced an interactive audio work as part of Collection(s) Part II which will be installed at  the closing exhibition. It takes place this Friday (18th March) at the Lower Foyer Gallery at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, 6-8pm.

The piece was constructed using redundant museum artifacts as source material, coaxing forgotten resonances and rhythmns from them and constructing them into a series of composed loops. At the event, visitors will be able to interact via a midi controller to remix their own combinations of composed loops as a soundtrack to the exhibition which will consist of pieces created during the workshops alongside the museum objects.

A short rendering of the audio appears below, this was recorded on the fly with me interacting with the composed elements via the interface.

More images

ReCollection(s) Part II (sketch) by D.Fyans

Hope to see you there.

D

Another new piece which came about quite subconsciously. A little externalised meditation in response to too much noise.

Stream/Download the audio:

At The Border Of Nothing by Erstlaub

D

It’s always with a weird reticence that I commit to these sorts of posts put when giri comes into play so strongly, it feels that anything less would be disrespectful.

It’s a massive loss to music world that Trish Keenan left us on Friday 14th January. A voice that has been right by my side since 2000 when I first heard “The Noise Made By People”, Broadcast’s first outing on Warp and stayed with me ever since: A weird and consistently beautiful album constantly straddling the line between 60’s Twee girlband chic and the type of pure radiophonic delight that I’m pretty sure Delia Derbyshire would have loved.

In honesty though, it wasn’t until some of the harder times in life that Keenan’s delivery and writing brought the vague beauty of hope into play, and for that I will be ever indebted. There are so many songs from the amazing Broadcast canon that I could quote as pieces which have transcended simple song and become maxim, but it somehow seems most fitting that I choose the song that almost always brought me close to tears, even before this dreadful, terrible loss.

“If you think nothing is yours
If I think everything belongs to me
How wrong Ill be
None of us have anything
Theres a place I have never explored
Another world we have yet to conquer
And untill then none of us have anything”

Goodbye Trish, thank you so much for the beauty and humanity you brought in such a sparse and wonderful way. I hope you are out playing in the fields with Rowan Morrison, the march hares and the rest of the witch cult.

D

I was absolutely gutted to learn this morning of the death of Peter Christopherson and continue to be so, a true legend of our time.

I can’t quite remember what my first Coil experience was but I do remember not really getting it until a few years later, Ruaridh TVO convinced me to listen to Time Machines.

Everything clicked instantly, Coil are the perfect example of my theory of post-cultural premonition where an artist exists who has a clear influence on your work and practices although you’ve produced the work before you’ve experienced theirs.

I’ve spent the years since getting drawn deeper and deeper into the sprawling back catalogue of Coil, and subsequently TG, and Sleazy’s more recent endeavours with Threshold Houseboys Choir and Soisong. The ever beautiful mix of the sound and mysticism.

I was fortunate enough to meet him a few years ago in Stereo, Glasgow before a THBC gig and really, I was so in awe that all I could really muster was the usual fanboy cliches while I shook his hand but he certainly came across as a warm and kind person.

Here’s to a great man who spent his entire life making amazing work, doing what he loved doing and pushing boundaries all over the place. His music has been a huge influence in my own work and has soundtracked an awful lot of my life and will continue to do so. I bet somewhere there is one hell of a Coil reunion gig going on!

“Wise words from the departing

Eat your greens, especially broccoli
Remember to say “thank you” for the things you haven’t had
By working the soil we cultivate the sky
We embrace vegetable kingdom
The death of your father, the death of your mother
Is something you prepare for

All your life
All their life

The death of the father and the death of the mother
Is something you prepare for

Wear sensible shoes and always say “thank you”
Especially for the things you never had

Is something you prepare for
All your life
All of your life

And enter the vegetable kingdom of our own heaven

By working the soil we cultivate good manners
Is to say “please” and “thank you”
Especially for the things you never had

And always say “thank you”
Especially for broccoli ”

You will be missed so much. Thank you. Rest in Peace.

D

Just a little note to point out that my man TVO has posted an entirely free collection of remixes/exclusive dubs here. ‘Outside the Circle Looking In’ clocks in at around 90 minutes and features unheard tracks, hard to get rarities and remixes of the notably absent Izu (we miss you Ronnie), Dextro, LJ Kruzer and some boring drone twunt called Erstlaub. Get on it!

I’ve had the privilege of getting a sneaky preview of his next HPLL release which is going to be ridiculously good, he’s even titled one of the pieces ‘Fyans, Lost” in tribute to a miscommunication on a London Derive a few years ago, immortalized in song, how delightful!

On more the more egocentric front, I’m having the rather lackluster premiere showing of the full version of the ‘Sleepwalking into the Underworld’ DVD at ‘Visualyse‘ at Dundee Student Union, Floor 5 next Wednesday starting from 9pm. The organisers have kinda chibbed me on how it’s getting displayed which will probably ruin the immersive point it tries to make but hell, I’ll be there to get drunk and moan about it anyway so please come say hi.

I’m going to be playing Braes in Dundee in May or June with the nice people from n_ilk but we’ve yet to get our diaries out to firm things up. Details will follow soon.

Cheers

D

Back in a previous life, I worked with Liam Frankland on a long running collaboration called Somniscope. He’s just managed to dig out a version of the site from a deep grave somewhere and put it online.

somniscope

The first thing you notice is how small screens were back then and how Youtube/Vimeo weren’t really much use for embedding and the like. If you can see it squashed away in the corner there, have a look around. It’s odd to remember those days, a lot happens in 5 years I guess.

Nostalgically,

D

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.

D.Fyans – Roses Made of Time from Erstlaub on 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.

Sorry

D

This is a meditation on the layers of time, both real and constructed, which exist within a landscape. Shot on a Nikon D90, edited in FC Pro, the soundtrack was created using a field recording of a train commute along with modular synthesis elements.

This piece is a response to a brief titled “Landscape and Intervention”.