Being given the prompt of dreams, I thought of a few things to base this project on:
I decided to go with something in the aesthetics of Folk-Horror as I am a fan of works in the genre and It is something I haven’t explored much before.
We breifly talked about Expressionism vs Impressionism
https://www.erinhanson.com/blog?p=understanding-impressionism-and-expressionism
I spent some time researching the history of radio broadcasting.
The history of radio in the UK has had a definite effect on media, and what we see as British culture.
I looked into the following:
The BBC’s status as a national broadcaster. John Reith. Difference between the UK and US ‘Golden Age of Radio’ adverts and entertainment such as “Lights Out” and “The Witches Tale”
The term “Reithianism” describes certain principles of broadcasting associated with Lord Reith. These include an equal consideration of all viewpoints, probity, universality and a commitment to public service. Audiences had little choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC, a government agency which had a monopoly on broadcasting. Reith, an intensely moralistic executive, was in full charge. His goal was to broadcast, “All that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement…. The preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of paramount importance.”[22] Reith succeeded in building a high wall against an American-style free-for-all in radio in which the goal was to attract the largest audiences and thereby secure the greatest advertising revenue. There was no paid advertising on the BBC; all the revenue came from a tax on receiving sets. Highbrow audiences, however, greatly enjoyed it.[23] At a time when American, Australian and Canadian stations were drawing huge audiences cheering for their local teams with the broadcast of baseball, rugby and hockey, the BBC emphasised service for a national, rather than a regional audience. Boat races were well covered along with tennis and horse racing, but BBC was reluctant to spend its severely limited air time on long football or cricket games, regardless of their popularity.[24]
Here are a few albums/projects that I enjoy that are inspired by radio, shortwave and number stations.
Tim Hecker – Radio Amor
William Basinski – Shortwavemusic
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Scanner
Jump scares with sound.
What makes a sound scary?
I remember Steve Reichs ‘Come Out’ being used as a sinister accompaniment to a scene in the tv show Devs where the only sound was the piece. Repetition can be frightening.
Hauntology. Broadcast & The Focus Group.
Silence is like being submerged in darkness. Builds tension and leaves the imagination. Underneath is a scene from Under the Skin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HeO10QoN5o
Cliched Waterphones and strings.
Not much of observation on sound, but, I find horror games are scarier than films due to interaction. When paired with visually disturbing thing images or scenes I think that silence is the most effective way to make the situation more frightening. In the audiobook of Steven Kings The Stand that I listened to last year, there is a chapter where the character Larry Underwood has to walk through the pitch-black 1.5 mile long Lincoln Tunnel that is littered with corpses. I remember this as being very tense and somewhat frightening, however this fear was not through sound but the narrative.
For the upcoming project, we were told to create a piece of work on the theme of dreams. I decided to do mine on a dream that I remember from last year.
The content of this dream – or rather, nightmare – can be read in the following script which I will be reading as the central part of the work.
The misty pond was surrounded by a thick wilderness of bulrush. On the far side of the pond, a grand old willow stretched out above the lake like an old man's hand, its leaves combing through the surface of the water. The water was coated in a thick scum of tundra coloured algae that moved as some amorphous being, littered with natural debris. I thought I saw a figure underneath the shading tree, washing some cloth or fabric, but as the breeze blew the branches, the apparition was no more. I turned and stood facing the derelict old building. One of the two towering wooden doors was ajar, and I went in, submerging myself in darkness, as the grand door shut behind me in silence. This damp room was small, with contorted walls that leaned and bowed like ancient trees. They were spotted with black mould. The peeling scab of wallpaper looked like a discarded newspaper in the puddle of a gutter. Its once luxurious azure gleam only now made the walls viler and colder in this dark dank tomb. These walls, rising to oblivion, had no end. The ceiling - if such a term is applicable - was an endless inverted well, a great void of black. I was then aware of the sound of footsteps. In front of me, another door, much less grand, began to move as the handle turned. The door slowly opened to a figure with a candlestick in hand. A pale veiled woman in a white nightgown. She stood with her wet black hair dripping, sending trails of inky black down her cold robed body. In her right hand, a blood-stained rag dripped, rhythmically, forming a puddle at her peculiar feet. Her blue lips unmoving, the wind whistled through the cracks of the walls. “I am your guide.” I asked: “Where are we going?” SILENCE “Where are we going?” SILENCE “Where are we going?” SILENCE “To the bottom of the lake” The candle flame began to flicker. The walls creaked and cracked. The once whispered wind wailed wild. The lady snapped back her head, teary red eyes wide and shrieked a banshee's cry. END
This dream was likely subconsciously inspired by my reading of ghost stories by M.R James, and a specific scene from Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).
I have read some of “The Weird and the Eerie” by Mark Fisher, and hope to eventually elaborate on this, as well as on the Hauntology of “Ghosts Of My Life”.
Elements of the dream, such as the lady talking through the wind, the bloody cloth and ‘peculiar feet’ have been dramatised and expanded upon after reading about the mythology of the Banshee, Caoineag, Bean-nighe, Cyhyraeth and the Midnight Washerwomen.
While researching Banshees, I came across the traditional Irish and Scottish practice of keening, a form of vocal lament for the dead.
https://alanlomaxarchive.bandcamp.com/track/keen-for-a-dead-child
This led me to spend time researching Alan Lomax, an ethnomusicologist, musician and folklorist.
The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.
Alan Lomax
Folklore can show us that this dream is age-old and common to all mankind. It asks that we recognize the cultural rights of weaker peoples in sharing this dream. And it can make their adjustment to a world society an easier and more creative process. The stuff of folklore—the orally transmitted wisdom, art and music of the people can provide ten thousand bridges across which men of all nations may stride to say, “You are my brother.”
Alan Lomax
Lomax talks about local cultures as something that should be maintained through the diversity of culture, in opposition to the oppression of cultural hedgemony that occurs through nationalism and the concept of universal popular culture. He calls this cultural equity.
I also found the British Library Sound Archives (available on https://sounds.bl.uk/) to be a great resource for a number of archived conversations on local ghost stories across the UK.
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Natural Snow Buildings (formed 1998) are a duo that creates unique music blended between post-rock, free/psychedelic/ritual folk, drone and ambient.
Their album Daughter of Darkness clocks in at 7 hours 20 of material with single tracks ranging from 5 minutes to 45. The structure of each ‘song’ is generally centred around a droning guitar/dulcimer-esque theme ( with a heavy bed of echo/delay, distortion) that repeats, sometimes subtly changes over time. Many songs become more ritualistic with chanting, shakers and drums. Their albums are often quite overdriven and lo-fi, contributing to the improvised folk aesthetic.
Grouper is the solo project of artist, musician, singer-songwriter and producer Liz Harris who makes reverb-heavy psychedelic folk. Acoustic in nature, the majority of her music is drowned in reverb to the point that the vocals become part of the instrumental.
Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
The double album – A I A : Dream Loss and Alien Observer – saw more of an ambient focus and is a personal favourite of mine.
In my radio piece, I will be using convolution reverbs, to give the soundscape a sense of place. I’ll use a long decay to make the room seem larger due to the impossibly tall ceiling and to accentuate the wet (dripping water) sounds.
At the current moment, I’m not sure how to implement music in my piece. The music in the dramatisations of M.R. James in the BBC Radio Collection that inspired my dream often came across as quite cliched, with the sounds of waterphones and strings.
I will likely use synthesis to create drones inspired by the film, The Innocents, what I watched last year and have previously written about.
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and collage as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.
In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, V&A, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, Pompidou Centre, Venice Biennale, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” downloads. since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
Vicki’s work was technically good and humorous in a witty kind of way.
I asked Vicki about the politics of her work. I was interested in what she would say on her opinions regarding copyright and if she had ever gotten in trouble for it.
She said that she tries to keep out of the political side of her work. I found this slightly frustrating personally as in my opinion her work shows the connection of creations and is against copyright but at the same time she then tries to be neutral perhaps in order to still maintain permission to use material in her work. Her work seems to be more of a commodity than something radical, where I believe it’s roots lie. Maybe I’m just being a bit mean, what isn’t entirely intentional – I think her work is entertaining and the majority have lots of effort put into them.
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I have previously read about plunderphonics and names like John Oswald and Negativland.
The term Culture Jamming was coined by Negativland member Don Joyce:
“As awareness of how the media environment we occupy affects and directs our inner life grows, some resist. The skillfully reworked billboard… directs the public viewer to a consideration of the original corporate strategy. The studio for the cultural jammer is the world at large.”
Culture Jamming itself is routed in the Situationist International theory of détournement – the idea of turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself/ countering the recuperation that occurs in mainstream culture.
I thought I’d talk about a favourite album of mine as I feel it has interesting relations to sound and the creative process.
Laughing Stock is the fifth and final album of the band Talk Talk, though at this point the band only contained members Mark Hollis and Lee Harris. It was produced by Tim Friese-Greene and was released in 1991 on Verve Records.
The album is attributed to the art-rock genre and ambiguous label of post-rock, however, in my opinion, it is an album that does not benefit from a genre label.
Below is Runeii, the closing track of the album.
“Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note, y’know. And that, it’s as simple as that really. And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.”
The creation of Laughing Stock was unconventional. Over the year-long recording sessions around 50 musicians contributed, though only 18 guests featured on the final album with much of the recorded material discarded.
According to Talk Talk’s manager, Keith Aspden, each musician was asked to “improvise on sections without hearing the full track. With just a basic chord structure at most, they were encouraged to try out anything their hearts encouraged them to, and then, thanks to the emerging digital technology, any results felt appropriate were employed, sometimes in places for which they had never originally been envisioned”.
While creating the album, they would often work in darkness, with windows covered, clocks removed from the walls, the only light from a strobe.
After, the improvised performances were arranged and overdubbed, with the addition of more concrete sounds such as a water heater and kettle. Looping and sampling were also used.
Mark Hollis, the singer, multi-instrumentalist and ‘audio-auteur’ of Talk Talk cited CAN’s Tago Mago and Duke Ellington/John Coltrane’s In a Sentimental Mood as inspirations.
One of my favourite things about this album is the dynamic control throughout. Ascension Day is the loudest track on the album and ends in complete abruptness as the next song After The Flood begins. The album begins and ends in perfect silence.
The technique of improvising and then arranging at a later point is an interesting way of working and is something I wish to explore in the future. When coming across new techniques I often record around 20 minutes of experiments as a means of remembering the sounds that could be achieved from the creative process, perhaps I could use these recordings in other work.
Klangkunst – Sound Art
Klangkorper – Sound Bodies
Klangobjekte – Sound Objects
Germany has a rich history in experimental rock developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The term that began to be used for this music was Krautrock, a term given by the British music press. It is also know as Kosmische Musik.
The scene was born out of a rejection of nationalism towards ‘German’ culture in WW2 as well as a rejection of popular American music yet, simultaneously influenced by the avant-garde, experimental and underground scene of places like New York. The West German student movement of 1968 was a series of protests that encapsulated this rejection of traditionalism, and the authority of nationalism.
The scene has been considerably influential in experimental music, despite the limited commercial success of the groups at the time. Techno, post-punkk, ambient and ‘post-rock’ all have at least some krautrock in them.
The band CAN are one of the pioneers of the genre. Members Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt were students under Karlheinz Stockhausen. As a band they had many influences from backgrounds in Jazz, the avant-garde, classical music, rock, funk and the psychadelic. Their music was constructed largely through improvised composition, sampling themselves in the studio, and editing the improvisations.
Faust, formed in 1971 are band that use improvisation, disssonace and experimental electronics in their work, that have been influential in industrial and ambient music.
Soundworks/ Exhibitions
Fur Augen und Ohren
Mille Plateaux, founded in 1994, is as record label that releases minimal techno, glitch and experimental electronic music. In 2000 they released the compilation series Cuts and Clicks what established the aesthetics of glitch music. Artists signed on the label included:
Glitch music is something that resonates with me individually, both aesthetically, and in its process. I find that in the current landscape of music creation, it is interesting that the process of creating music on computers has become a means of replicating older technology, while maintaining the accessibility and more democratic nature of a lot of digital technology. For me, the technology, and digital medium, should be used to its full aesthetic potential so create experiment work.
Germany has a history of classical music – Bach, Straus, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Handel, Mendelsson, Pachelbel.
Interestingly, during WW2, Richard Wagners music was used as embodiment of ‘german-ness’ and was adopted as national music.
The main focus of Andrew Pierre Hart’s work is the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting. His practice is an ongoing rhythmic research and play of improvised and spontaneous generative processes, through various mediums: sound, video, performance, found object and image, language, photography and installation, and themes of: improvisation, collective memory, cross-modality, spatialisation, musicality and rhythmology.
A focus of Andrews presentation was built around improvisation and performance. One of these performances, in collaboration with Shabaka Hutchings (of Sons of Kramer, and The Comet Is Coming) was improvised over a interviewed man.
I often find that when paired with music over the top, we start to see the rhythms of everyday speech in a more pronounced way. Some favourite examples of music that include field recorded speech include the piece “Sleep” by the band Godspeed you! Black Emperor, as well as the music of Boards of Canada, who repurpose sound from old VHS tapes. When creating music, I often like to use a VST plugin that streams digital radio right into Ableton Live. This means I can access streamed sounds from across the world. I sometimes use talking based radio stations, and I find it interesting that what the station is talking about seems to change meaning when sounds and music are played underneath (or on top of).
This got me thinking about an album by Jan Jelinek called Zwichen (between). Here is a description of the album from its Bandcamp page.
‘Zwischen brings together twelve sound poetry collages using interview answers by public figures. Each collage consists of the brief moments between the spoken words: silences, pauses for breath and hesitations in which the interviewees utter non-semantic sound particles. These voice collages also control a synthesizer, creating electronic sounds that overlay and merge with the voices to make twelve acousticstructures.’