Lärmlicht #4

August, 2011

A new Lärmlicht, composed in residence at CMMAS, the national institute for music and sonic art in Mexico. It’s composed from lightbulbs, visually and sonically. (Spot the celeste). The fixed media version looks and sounds like this:

Thanks very much to CMMAS, whose facilities and hospitality were top notch all the way through, especially when the studio was hit by lightning and everything almost ended. (Almost actually). Also for providing such a great place to work and to meet people doing cool things. Lärmlicht #4 is coming to film festivals & performance spaces near you soon. In the meantime, press PLAY. Then tweet it.

Addendum: If you’re in the south of England at the end of October, come to the Scott Polar Research Institute on the 30th, to see & hear a 9-channel A/V installation written with Sarah McKee, who is a Very Fine writer. Celebrating 100 years of improvements in the outdoor apparel industry. (Not really).

Bonesong #3 [Edinburgh Fringe Festival]

3rd – 14th August

After a week of night-train heavy lifting in and around London, the short opera Kate Whitley and I wrote went way up north to the Fringe. New libretto by Finn Beames, set design by Georgia de Grey and Claudia Parkes. Twelve really good performances, to full houses and men and their dogs, alternately. Things got messy, Bekah Atkins made photos:

The Fringe Review called it a ‘mesmerising, winning fusion, innovative in its use of myriad unsettling, inventive noises to enhance an already refreshingly unconventional score’. Broadway Baby was keen too, while Herald Scotland was not entirely sure what had happened. (Still counts)?

Vidjo & audjo recordings on this mini-site, along with details of everybody else involved, together numerous to mention & thank here. Boom.

TROSP @ Bold Tendencies

saturday 23rd July

Together with a whole bunch of brilliant people, we brought Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to Peckham Multi Storey Car Park, in London. There was an education workshop, an orchestra of 100 players from all around the country, a DJ set from Gabriel Prokofiev, a sculpture park, and a Very Nice Bar. That sold Campari. It’s still there. A thousand people came.  Jack Farrell took pictures, and they look like this:

Richard Morris of the Times called it the ‘most exciting development in classical music for decades, if not centuries’, while The Arts Desk wrote that the sounds ‘rumbled out over London as if only now under the low concrete ceiling were they finding their true voice’. They must have liked it.

You can find more documentation of the project over at the site, and scour the web for the many echoes of excited bloggers and tweetahs. Thanks to mo peeps Ed Irwin-Singer, Chris Stark and Kate Whitley, Bold Tendencies, Nonclassical, Frank’s Café, and aaaaaall the individuals involved.

In other news, we did another Carmen Elektra night. More operas, dance music and warm tinned beer, this time in a big condemned warehouse on the edge of Cambridge. Click here for pitchas & reviews.

Lärmlicht #1 @ Portland Works

saturday 11th june ’11

Another outing for the litebox, this time at Sheffield’s Portland Works, at a night called Vex, organized by Hand Of and played at by an armful of really good composers and coders and DJs. Andrey Vasilyev took a brilliant photo – look at the faces:

You can read about Vex on Sheffieldblog and in Article Magazine. Rumour has it that Now Then are furiously scribbling, printing and posting +ve/-ve words. Keep an eye. Big thanks to Lou and the Good Souls at Hand Of, to William Cheshire, Liam Mitchell, Alex McLean, Alex Wright. Remember the name Tom Rozwadowski, who is a shy boy not on the internet, and writes fine, fine musics.

Also, by means of a brief addendum, read about Vex and Lärmlicht #1 in a Drowned in Sound feature here. Nice.

TXTR LK SN @ Kettle’s Yard + Miscellaneous 5

friday 11th march ’11

First performance of TXTR LK SN, an acousmatic piece in stereo at Kettle’s Yard art gallery, and a second one at the brilliant Miscellaneous Theatre(?) Festival vol. 5, in Cambridge. Some wurds for your infos:

TXTR LK SN is a piece about space. Recordings made inside an old harpsichord (plastics unfurling, trembling metals and a spade) are used to suggest a complex of shapeshifting resonators, into which amplified sounds from the same instrument are projected. Digital imaginations realize acoustic implications, and the result is something between a spewing volcano and a very bad dream. The piece is named for The Stranglers, and is best heard in the dark. You can hear some of it thurrr ↓.

Download: download

Thanks very much to Tom, Kate and Jude for carrying the monster across town.

In other news, long overdue following degree finals: CMMAS has invited me to work as composer-in-residence at its repurposed convent facility in Morelia, Mexico this summer. Expect a new Lärmlicht A/V work showing near(ish) you sometime next year. Also, long live c:hear – a physical forum for sonic art curated with Jonathan Green over the last two years, which is now happily retired, following two workshops on Max/MSP, and a very interesting contribution from Simon Scott. Mmm, media-rich.The site will stay up as a resource for anyone interested.

ArcSoc Dystopia

saturday 12th February ’11

Strobes, stockings and psychedelica & a loud, 35-minute set of MPD thumpery: a belated tribute to the sadly departed Ms. Keenan. Unfortunately, I have no idea who these people are, but rest assured that they were there too.

Click below for a kakotopic dream of Broadcast: The Be Colony / Flying Lotus: Time Vampires / Prefuse 73: Sunbeamstress / Baths: Lovely Bloodflow. Kick drummm.

Download: download

With particular thanks to Jake Hollis for his knob-twiddling prowess, more general thanks to ArcSoc for the night, and with both particular and general thanks to the many bodies that danced.

Bonesong #2

friday 29th october ’10

First performance of ‘Bonesong’, a short opera written with Kate Whitley on a libretto by Conrad Steel and Sarah McKee, in the transformed basement of the Cambridge Zoology Museum. J Langridge, J Stephenson and J Songi sang, Will Gardner conducted and Thom Andrewes directed. Costume design was by Kat Waters and Tim Crombie. So many names. Here are photos:

And here’s an excerpt from Bonesong, in 2 channels instead of 4, recorded by Jonathan Green:

Download: download

Massive thanks to all the members of the orchestra for the rehearsals & performance, to the singers and actors, to Carmen Elektra, to Bekah Atkins and Kat Waters for the photos, to Jonathan Green, extraspecially to Ruth Hardie, to William Cheshire and Pete Y Martin for their DJ sets, to all those that came and saw and heard, and all those that came and saw but did not hear. Next time, capacity will be HUGE.

There’s a nice review here and another one here. See more pictures here.