Fri 11

I have recorded an hour long track with mainly a bit of Digitakt/Blofeld for drones and a bit of 110 hertz spirituality mixed into some 2020/2021 locked down and unlocked down samples with some pre-Covid world recordings for a bit of contrast.

No longer acceptable as entertainment student party and cheap deal booze nights got sacked for hard clubbing and sonic experimentation – only the good stuff from then on was pursued. The dawn of  multitrack recording ensued with late night sessions of improvised intoxicated songs with Ryan Lambie as Johns Indie Disco.  The JID  years were a productive period, tracks of techno punk quality and some flashes of pure genius, but only 3 live gigs, meant the main means of promotion was handing out home burnt CDs in the street. The Ladywell Lout era then ensued, involving the circle of contributors from JID with semi-documentary based audio on gala days, gadgies, losers and high rises.

https://theladywelllout.bandcamp.com/

Stories of radical land ownership in North Lewis is a project produced in collaboration with artist Virginia Hutchison, that brings together narratives surrounding the community land buyout of the Galson Estate in 2007. Developed in conversation with artists Stephen Hurrel and Fiona Rennie, the project weaves together localaudio archives and interviews and brings them into contemporary conversations surrounding community land ownership. 

Chapter 5 presents recitals of the Gaelic place-names that define Cros, a gentle call and response between Gaelic and English - though not a direct translation - through the landscape, geography and history of the area. Underpinning the recital are Seismic Sounds, produced by Stephen Hurrel.

Stories of radical landownership in North Lewis – full project info

Produced in collaboration with artist Virginia Hutchison this project brings together narratives surrounding the community land buyout of the Galson Estate in 2007. Created during the COVID pandemic in 2020/2021 the project weaves together local audio archives and interviews and brings them into contemporary conversations surrounding community land ownership. With access and social distancing measures in mind the project has taken the form of a series of cast bronze artefacts temporarily sited in the landscape of North Lewis. Embedded with digital QR codes the artefacts link visitors directly to the audio works via mobile phone.

Each of the six objects – a series of cast bronze artworks moulded from cut peat – contain conversations recorded with members of the local community. Two out of six of the artworks remain open as audio project spaces for future conversations.

“If you didn’t know the names of these places you couldn’t talk about them..”

Underpinning the interviews are recitals of the Gaelic place-names that define North Lewis. A gentle call and response between Gaelic and English - though not a direct translation - through the landscape, geography and history of the area.

Looking out onto the Barvas moor visitors can be mistaken for thinking that it is an empty landscape. But listening closely to the Gaelic expressions used to describe the environment of North Lewis gives a sense of the intimate and complex relationship between people and place. A language embedded within local culture and knowledge and not always translatable.

“Space doesn’t become a place until you interact with it. It doesn’t become a place until you name it…and it becomes a place in relation to somewhere or something else..ie. it’s always changing.”

Permeating the voices within the audio works are recordings made from the constant movements and tectonic shifts beneath the Earth’s surface. Produced by artist Stephen Hurrel, the seismic sounds provide layers to the stories and issues that surround engagement with the landscape. Hurrel’s work with Seismic Sounds and with Gaelic speaking communities in Barra, weaves closely into the stories of radical landownership in North Lewis.  Where these conversations meet and overlap presents opportunities for wider discussions around land reform in Scotland.

Many thanks to the Galson Estate staff and community. Special thanks to Agnes and Frank Rennie, Lisa Maclean, Annie MacSween, Iain Gordon Macdonald, Richard Collins (Edinburgh University), Edinburgh College of Art and Blackbay Recording Studios.

This project was produced in conversation with artists Stephen Hurrel and Fiona Rennie.

Virginia Hutchison is an artist based in Glasgow and the Isle of Lewis. Working within a predominantly social context her practice draws on the processes involved in collaborative creative production to explore how different forms of artistic engagement influence the interaction we have with our environments. Virginia currently runs the bronze casting facilities at Edinburgh College of Art and is one part of the duo ’In the Shadow of the Hand’ with artist and film-maker Sarah Forrest.

Produced with support from Community Land Scotland and the Stove Network.

https://www.galsontrust.com/about-clsartproject

[1]Annie Macsween, Faclan 2020, A History with Heart and Soul – The Place-names of North Lewis, Ness Historical Society

[2]Frank Rennie, Dùthcas 2020, The Changing Outer Hebrides – Galson and the meaning of Place

This will let you hang upside down from the dancefloor. Natural scientist Rym Nouioua and sound art curator Sascha Brosamer will guide you to scientific studies and environmental issues in artistic contexts. In this episode of a documentary-style podcast about bio-art, bat sounds and experimental music you’ll learn about ultrasonic sounds, bioacoustics and Covid-19 spread from bats. Furthermore you will listen to some tracks made mainly by bat sounds, based on a sound library from their current project “The Bat effect ''. Besides the communication of bats by recording the ultrasonic noises and presenting them into sound, we will illustrate the interrelation of human and non-human and create points of contact of human and animal shared living spaces.

1. Thomas Finbarr - Impressions of Hong Kong (12:10)

2. Clarinda Tse & Craig Hunter - (mildly) toxic (8:18)

3. Jan Sparsam - Mauerlunge (2:20)

4. Doriane Souilhol - Girls pity boum onomatopoeia (2:32)

5. Chelidon Frame - The Seasons Change in a Somber Montage (5:49)

6. Johanna Linsley with Jan Mertens - Sonic Spectral Summoning (22:34)

7. Ryan Lambie - Taking an audio sniffer for a walk (extract)  (2:12)

8. Johnny Dixon - Pill Pieces 6 (1:01)

Taken from recordings made during a short stay in Hong Kong this sound collage includes the sounds of traffic, typhoons, national parks, a library, a monastery, ashopping mall, the underground, a museum and a gift shop. Evoking the contrasts that make up the city.

First entering a studio as a bass player, Thomas Finbarr soon learnt his way around both analogue and digital recording. After an MSc in Sound Design at EdinburghUniversity he has worked as a recordist, sound designer and dialogue editor as well as creating his own sound pieces for festivals theatre productions and installations, including pieces at the Perth Concert Hall in Scotland andMedialab Prado in Madrid. He is currently living in Barcelona.

2. Clarinda Tse & Craig Hunter- (mildly) toxic

Toxicityis such a loaded term, and foraging wild fungi highlights the lack of nuanceattached to the various uses. There is no dichotomy, but a spectrum oftoxicity, a lack of information and a conversation based on fear. This pieceshares our experience of consuming (mildly) toxic mushrooms.

Craig Hunter is a journalist, music and radio enthusiast. Clarinda Tse is an interdisciplinary artist, listener, facilitator, movement practitioner, Hong Kong-born and Glasgow-based. She works across being a sofa barnacle and a mutating muscle.@clarindatse     @koalacraig

3 Jan Sparsam - Mauerlunge

The tracks were composed for a longer radio show documentary about the sonification of electromagnetic fields through induction, thereby revealing a new spectrum of sound in our environment. The basic sounds were recorded with a self-built device called"Elektrosluch" (after the design of JonášGruska), with which such fields can be transformed into audio signals. The track “Strippe” (colloquial for “phone”) is a recording of a DSL system. The Track “Mauerlunge” (“WallLung”) is a collage of field recordings and wire-tapped sounds from hi-fi speaker cables. Both tracks are previously released under my solo moniker monadnode.

My name is Jan, I am a sociologist and musician from Freiburg, the most southwestern end of Germany. I play guitar in a garage punk band and compose music individually as monad node, using a wide array of instruments and self-built devices like synthesizers, tape loops, drum machines as well as a ton of effects that I self-soldered. I also produce a monthly radio show with two friends in which we discuss current releases fromthe field of experimental music. The show is called "Büchse Buntes"(roughly translatable as pick-n-mix) and runs on the free radio station"Radio Dreyeckland" (http://www.rdl.de).

4. Doriane Souilhol -Girls pity boum onomatopoeia

Collage of onomatopoeias, noises, fictitious languages of the post-punk scene with the voices of Lizzy Mercier Descloux -Pylon - Vivien Goldman ...  This short sound piece is part of the INNUENDO project which started in 2019 in collaboration with the artist Amandine Rué. We shared music and focused on the gender of this music, on my side feminist punk and post-punk, and for Amandinehair metal. The lyrics, the poses, the gestures, the clothes.

http://www.mydoriane.com

5. Chelidon Frame  - The Seasons Change in a Somber Montage

Like most of the tracks I've composed recently under the name Chelidon Frame, even "The Seasons Change in Somber Montage" has been realized during lockdowns and red zones. With this song, I've moved in two directions: on the one hand, heavily processing raw sound to make them completely unrecognizable on the other, slightly modifying some field recordings to realize an alien yet familiar soundscape.The overall aim was to combine e recreate an imaginary landscape of glitches and noises, a travel of the mind during restricted times.

Chelidon Frame is an experimental electronic music project that mainly works with fieldrecordings, radio interferences, guitars and processed sounds. His installations are experienced-based and suggest a dialogue between the location (both virtual and physical) and the sounds proposed, aiming to deliver a message in the simpler yet most effective way. The use of code, data analysis and data-driven sounds, allow information to be experienced anew. In his studioworks and live sets different layers of sounds - guitars, synthesizers and custom-made instruments - piles up creating unexpected new soundscapes.

6. Johanna Linsley with Jan Mertens - Sonic Spectral Summoning

This learning experience is aimed at equipping participants with the tools necessary to identify, isolate and summon your own ghostly spectre from the acoustic atmosphere of your choice. Every ringtone, white noise machine, laptop fan or refrigerator buzz has the potential to contain a latent haunting. Every inside joke, gossip circuit and open secret might, if you listen the right way, have the capacity to raise the dead. Drawing on common affects like revenge, melancholy and ecstatic force to tune your senses, you will develop a sensitivity to wraiths, apparitions, and lingering presences. (Originally commissioned for Queer Extension)

Johanna Linsley is an artist and researcher based in Dundee, Scotland.  She works across performance, interdisciplinary writing and sound. Her ongoing creative collaboration Stolen Voices, with Rebecca Collins, develops 'sonic detection' as a way of thinking expansively about site and place.  Her work has been presented in the UK and internationally, in venues including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Victoria & AlbertMuseum (London), the Wellcome Collection and the Centre for Contemporary Art(Glasgow). She is a Lecturer in Creative Practice at the University of Dundee.She collaborates often with Jan Mertens, a sound artist also based in Dundee. http://www.jhlinsley.com   https://soundcloud.com/janmertens      https://www.queerextension.org/

7. Ryan Lambie - Taking an audiosniffer for a walk (extract)

A shorter than planned piece based around sounds captured on a walk with a SOMA Ether electromagnetic audio receiver.  File then manipulated / mixed in the Borderlands granular app (on an Ipad in a caravan in Cornwall).  Longer piece to be uploaded to bandcamp at the end of Feb 2022.  Lo-fi experimental field recording artist from the Scottish central belt. Work mainly revolves around one take Iphone 5s and Sony ICD-UX560 voice recordings. Everyday sounds of the streets, radio static, random pub conversations and feedback. Borderline sound art. 

8. Johnny Dixon - Pill Pieces 6 

Only Transition is an exploration of presence within the soundscape of the Cairngorms. The lochs, the river, the wind, the rain, the endless heather and mountains of granite covered in green inviting the traveler to step further into their wealth. Over a week spent exploring the paths and hills of Glenshee, sound marks big and small slowly emerge, a brief introduction to the history and spirits that forged its terrain.

Steve Ashby is a musician, composer, and sound artist based in the United States. Ashby work focuses on sound found in the natural and digital world to discover places of intersection which engage in the art of listening.

A short look at human movement made in response to Léa Molinier's zine "entrez dehors" which was available free of monetary cost in exchange for anything made.