Hello
I’m writing this whilst in Braga, in the North West of Portugal. I’m visiting the Semibreve Festival, with my notebook at hand, capturing the experience and atmosphere of the event and city in writing.
It’s been an amazing opportunity to catch up with friends and experience wonderful live sets, dinners and conversations with Jan Jelinek, Burnt Friedman, Alva Noto, Stephen O’Malley, Félicia Atkinson, Caterina Barbieri and so many more. The trip was rather tainted by a fraudster gaining access to my bank accounts and trying to siphon off my savings, and at the time of writing I’m still battling with the banking system. Not an easy task at all!
I played my last live show of the year at Café Oto recently, collaborating with my old friend Roberto Paci Dalò which turned out to be a wonderful event. We played as part of the Suono Grasso Festival, celebrating Italian music from Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. It was a fabulous night with Marta Salogni, Silvia Tarozzim, Stefano Pilia, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and more.
The entire night was recorded on both film and audio, so I’m looking forward to sharing this all with you one day soon then.
It was then off to Synthfest in Sheffield where I finally caught up with friends I’d not seen since 2019, with no thanks to the pandemic. After exploring a vast array of new electronic tools, it was off to the remotest location in the Peak District in the UK. As you can see in the photo, I was carefully in disguise for fear the tabloid newspapers might catch me out on ‘holiday,’ when I should be serving the needs of the world with art and music, of course.
Staying on a dairy farm, waking up the sound of gentle moos from the cows, taking walks through the vast landscapes and simply finally time to breathe again was very welcome. And the fact there was no zero phone reception and internet speeds circa 1995, meant reading and watching films was the best alternative, when not climbing hills.
The Horror Show! just opened at Somerset House, London, and as I expected the opening was a wild affair indeed, from gigantic goths to singer Nick Cave! I thoroughly recommend taking a visit to see the show if you can as it captures the spirit of creative rebellion in Britain over the last 50 years in a very dynamic way.
Visitors can even view the radio scanner and aerial where I took my artist name from back in the early 1990s, and admire the technology that was to launch my career.
The list of participants is simply overwhelming – check out the website for more details. The Horror Show! runs from 27 Oct 2022 – 19 Feb 2023, and is co-curated by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and Claire Catterall, who also conceived the idea.
‘Loess,’ my new album in collaboration with Dutch artist Modelbau, was released at the beginning of October on Moving Furniture Records in The Netherlands. Issued in an edition of 300 copies on a beautiful 2LP set, the album was written and recorded on 4-track Fostex tape decks, with cassettes exchanged through the post, recreating how we used to record work in the 1980s.
Frans De Waard (Modelbau) and I would record a couple of tracks and send them back and forth and see what emerged.
“The results are startlingly enticing. Time seems to lengthen, and the interplay of tones and overtones create rich pathways of sound. There is a sense of space and form that envelops each piece. Unusual textures combine to form an elemental whole. At points, it’s both equally serene and shadowy, hypnotic and poetic.
Tape hiss at times enters the sonic conversation, reminding us of the source of these materials, but never distracts. Rimbaud and De Waard offer listeners an album using old-fashioned techniques, music recorded directly to tape, that penetrates through time and space, leaving us with this resplendent and absorbing moment to embrace.”
It’s also available on popular streaming sites such as Spotify and Apple Music, but of course the best support you can offer is directly through the label. British buyers who want to pick it up locally can order it directly from Norman Records here.
Bandcamp Friday continues to offer support for artists too. For this one day, the first Friday of every month at the moment, Bandcamp generously gives 100% of profits to the artists themselves. Not that this should discourage you from supporting or buying at any other times of course, since Bandcamp is arguably the best model for buying music at present.
As regular as clockwork, rather like these newsletters, I continue to offer exclusive material. Last month I offered ‘The Last Cowboy is Dead.’
My work has often focused on the sound of the city, its inhabitants and the character of the location itself. For this project with French street artist Zevs I had the opportunity to collaborate on a work that connects the city of Paris with the universal figure of the Marlboro cowboy, creating a connection between language and found sound.
The listener can hear a hypnotic repetition of the word itself, over and over again, delivered by Zevs himself, in a way that creates a sense of almost perverse spirituality, reciting a mantra out of the pronunciation of the very word Marl-Bo-Ro. This is mixed in with recordings of the Parisian street sellers offering up bootleg variations on the cigarettes themselves. It touches on ideas of voyeurism, responsibility and public and private spaces, weaving fragments of communication in a tapestry of sound. You can listen and buy it here.
I also offered up more exclusive material. ‘Conversations with the Anthony Burgess cassette archives (1964-1993)’ was a special project curated by Alan Dunn in collaboration with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and Sub Rosa.
It was released as a 2 LP/ 2 CD set in 2019. Disc 1 contains the very first and last known recordings of Burgess’s voice alongside domestic incidents, rehearsals and answering machine messages, while Disc 2 invited 23 artists and musicians to remix the rare material into a unique Burgess portrait far beyond ‘A Clockwork Orange’.
I created several variations for the release. One was released officially on the LP set. For this special issue I have added an unreleased extended mix of the track. Fan Club members will have access to two very different and expansive variations of these pieces in their subscription. See here.
Unfortunately the CD boxes and vinyl sets sold out extremely quickly but you can still pick up the digital files.But, of course, it’s never too late to join up as a member of the Fan Club at Bandcamp. At the time of writing, you gain access to 36 albums of material unavailable anywhere else, and at the cost of a couple of coffees a month. No-one could argue this is exploitative! Join up here.
If you dig deep enough into the Tate website, you can discover their first ever sound art commission, created by my fine friend Stephen Vitiello, and myself.
We produced this work back in 2004. It was composed to accompany Sound Surface at Tate Modern in London which explored the notion of surfaces in contemporary art, in conjunction with the Donald Judd and Brancusi work showing there at the time.
We also performed live and engaged in a public conversation about sound and surfaces in art and music. It feels rather a pity that it seems to have been rather forgotten in their archives though. I’ve spoken to staff, curators and even the director over the years, none of whom seems to be actually aware of this first commission! You can download it for free here.
If you happen to be reading this and live in Melbourne, Australia, I’d recommend booking a ticket to see this special performance, where you’ll hear my music used in a new work by the great choreographer Lucy Guerin. It runs from 09-12 November at Space 28, Performing Arts Building. More details here.
I’m always proud to offer my remix or production skills to the music of others, and this new release from Starlight Assembly is a case in point. Starlight Assembly is Dominic Appleton (Breathless/This Mortal Coil) and Matteo Uggeri (Sparkle in Grey) and their debut album ‘Starlight And Still Air‘ has been re-imagined by a roster of international artists and released both digitally and as a limited edition cassette exactly one year after the original album came out.
Listen to the entire album here. My mix opens the release.
‘Listening Forest’ continues to wow audiences at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. It was created by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and uses light, sound, and projections to create an interactive walk through the woods. This site-specific exhibition brings together eight immersive installations, each one activated by you: your heart rate, your body, your voice, and your movements direct the forest’s response.
It runs until 1 January 2023 so hope that some of you get the chance to experience in reality, something I’ve yet to do too! Otherwise for the time-being you’ll have to make too with this wondeful film and pick up the soundtrack here.
So, until next month, thanks for your support and wrap up warm!
Best wishes
Professor Scanner
::: listen :::
Dave Clarkson: A Pocket Guide to Dream Land (Cavendish House)
Carl Stone: Gall Tones (Unseen Worlds)
Brian Eno: ForeverAndEverNoMore (UMC)
Various: Irida Records Hybrid Musics from Texas (Blank Forms)
::: read :::
Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics (Barbican)
Jan Fabre: Stigmata (Skira)
Victoria Jenkins: Visions of the Occult (Tate)
Dave Thompson: The Avant-Garde Woodstock (Createsspace)
::: watch :::
Rien à foutre: Julie Lecoustre & Emmanuel Marre
Swan Song: Todd Stephens
This Much I Know to be True: Andrew Dominik
Emily the Criminal: John Patton Ford
