Hello
Spring has arrived here, with the obligatory mix of sunshine and rainstorms, so a perfectly confusing season, as always!
The Phenol Tapes
My new album, The Phenol Tapes, just out on Alltagsmusik, has proven to be quite a success already, which is encouraging. The special edition with a print sold out within a few hours, but thankfully the standard digipak CD and digital will, of course, remain available. I’m going to ensure that none of the releases on the label ever go out of print, so there’s no need to ever worry about missing a release either.
Since some people had asked me about the context of the album, I wrote an expansive blogpost about how it all came together. It was recorded on Captiva Island in Florida in 2017, whilst I was participating in The Rauschenberg Residency. For six weeks, I lived and worked alongside a host of other creatives, living in Rauschenberg’s old house, creating work in his studio, reading his books, often with handwritten notes in them, and even wearing one of his (hugely oversized for me) shirts whilst learning to weld one day.
Read the full piece here and learn more about the residency itself and the ethos of running a new label, which in essence is simple – to advance new work, to extend into different mediums, and to share my work within an artistic community.
Het Concreet in Tilburg NL
Some of you might recall my trip to Tilburg in the Netherlands in November 2023, where I joined the team at Het Concreet for a week-long residency in their music studio.
Het Concreet is a Dutch sound collective dedicated to finding new sounds by experimenting with analog electronic devices, magnetic tape and acoustics. Their main instrument is magnetic tape, so I collaborated with my own analogue gear.
We improvised over a few days, then collaborated for a 12-hour long live radio broadcast. So, here’s an excerpt from part of that live session, crackly, scratchy and entirely surprising.
Remix for Clock DVA
I am super excited that my special remix for legendary UK band Clock DVA is coming out on vinyl soon, alongside the one and only Atom Heart. The vinyl itself will feature an etched side with DVA’s logo, and each copy will be numbered.
Clock DVA is one of the pivotal groups of industrial music. Founded more than forty years ago, the instrumental outfit has seen a contemporary partnership of electronic experimentation forged between Adi Newton and Maurizio Martinucci since 2010.
Let the press describe the mood of my piece:
“The second stalwart of electronics drafted in is Scanner for his reframing of “Rayonist Refraction #1.” A ghostly female voice haunts a backdrop of electrical fizz and voluminous cracks of shuddering thunder. Guitar strings tremble in this eerie landscape with a smattering of spoken text bringing solace to this hostile environment. It’s music for an all to immediate reality.”
Pre-order your copy here.
Digging through the Archives
I have been digging through my archives recently and rediscovered this mini documentary was broadcast years ago! This South Bank Show episode was originally broadcast on ITV in the UK in 1997, featuring an interview with me talking about my approach and methodology at the time, where my body of work was focusing on the indiscriminate signals found in the airwaves, which I utilised within my ambient works.
The original film was uploaded to YouTube in the days when you were severely limited to how much time you could actually upload. As such, it was always split into two parts. So, now you can watch this back without interruption. The conversation is already hot under the video, so feel free to join in!
EarSpace Radio Show
Episode 8 of my radio show EarSpace, is now available to listen back to on totallyradio.com
From the past into the present and future, EarSpace offers you a vast array of electronic music. This month’s show featuresthe dark industrial sounds of Source Direct, Demdike Stare and Clock DVA, a classic ambient tune from Richie Hawtin, rhythmic workouts from Burnt Friedman and Stefan Goldman, as well as James Tenney. Rafael Toral, Floating Points, Celer and so much more! Listen back here.
Off to Rockfield Studios in Wales
This month, I’m off to the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales to record new material with my old pals, and fellow members of our band Githead – Colin Newman of Wire and Malka Spigel and Max Franken of Minimal Compact. It’s been some years since we’ve had such genuine playtime with them, so I’m super excited to see what emerges. We are arriving with nothing prepared at all, so it’s going to be a thrill for us all.
The studio is known for such recordings as Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ as well as countless artists recordings, from Judas Priest to Rush, The Stone Roses to Oasis, Simple Minds to New Order.
In March, I played my first show of the year at Loki in Brixton which turned out to be great fun. It took place in a converted industrial space beneath a railway yard in South London, the kind of place that seems to be ever rare in such an ever-developing city. Immersed in dry-ice I played a rhythmically driven set that seemed to prove very popular. Here’s hoping for more opportunities this year then.
Future plans
If you are fortunate enough to live in Gijón, Northern Spain, then please come along to this very special outdoor performance at Laguna Boreal, Jardín Botánico Atlántico on Sunday 5 May. I will be performing a new work to be listened to on headphones only. The concert will be not be experienced on speakers at all, but exclusively on headphones, so listeners can sit wherever they wish within the botanical gardens and enjoy the music. It’s going to be an intimate show indeed! More details here.
I just finished recording a new 70-minute work with a unique musical alchemist, who has been active since 1978, producing some of the most surreal productions of the last 40 years. I’ve also finished all the edits on the next release for Alltagsmusik, which will be out in the summer. Oh, and so much more. Just stay tuned!
As ever, thanks for your support.
Warmest wishes
Professor Scanner
::: listen :::
Psychophysicist: Audio Computing (Rizosfera)
Celer: Selected Self Releases 2006-2007 (Two Acorns)
Current 93: In Menstrual Night (House of Mythology)
Sedibus: The Heavens (Cooking Vinyl)
::: read :::
Sound Signatures 09 (Blank Forms)
Gabriel Pomerand: Saint Ghetto of the Loans Grimoire (World Poetry)
Deyan Sudjic: Analogue: A Field Guide (Frances Lincoln)
Paul Purgas: Subcontinental Synthesis: Electronic Music at the National Institute of Design, India (Strange Attractor)
::: watch :::
Smile: Michael Ritchie
Gerhard Richter Painting: Corinna Belz
Saltburn: Emerald Fennell
Marmalade: Keir O’Donnell
