Hello
Sitting here in the studio, it’s currently 33 degrees, which is quite phenomenal and makes for truly sweaty creativity!
June was busy with recording sessions and finishing up a new release which will defy all expectations I think, and be released in two very unique editions. A big tease I know, but more on that soon.
Neural 30th Birthday
I played a very intimate live show in London at Birkbeck University of London at the end of June, to celebrate the 30th anniversary for Italian magazine, Neural which has been exploring digital culture and media art for all this time. I was even once the cover star for the magazine back in 1999, 25 years ago!
To acknowledge this significant anniversary and to launch Neural editor Alessandro Ludovico’s new book Tactical Publishing: Using Senses, Software, and Archives in the Twenty-First Century (MIT Press), I performed a very special live show in the Keynes Library, using live radio and RF radiation signals from the locality.
The space resonated for me especially as this is where Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, John Maynard-Keynes and others associated with the Bloomsbury Group used to hang out. What a place of history!
The Berklee Sessions
So, The Berklee Sessions, is out this week on CD and digital. It’s already been receiving some extremely positive reviews, and to receive praise from my peers is even more rewarding. A message from the enigmatic and influential musician and artist Steven Stapleton of Nurse with Wound renown, enthused profusely, saying that for him it was the best record he had heard in years, more psych rock than ‘jazz,’ and it deserved to be a hit!
Well, I’m not sure it will be a hit, but let’s see. Composer Hannah Peel kindly played an exclusive piece on her Night Tracks show on BBC Radio 3. Listen back here, where I join in the company of Prokofiev, Michael Tippett, Stars of the Lid and many more.
The album was recorded in March 2014, but has taken ten years to release. I have literally dozens and dozens of alternative mixes in my archive of tracks, and quite honestly, it was one of the hardest mixing and mastering projects I’ve ever been personally involved in. Every single instrument had three microphone recordings of it. Multiply these by the number of instruments, cymbals, snare, kick drum, effects units, etc., and you’ll appreciate what a challenge it’s been.
The entire one-day session was initiated by my friend, American saxophonist and composer Neil Leonard, with a host of amazing guest musicians. These were David Tronzo on electric (slide) guitar (David Sanborn, John Cale, The Lounge Lizards, Sex Mob, Wayne Horvitz), Mike Rivard on bass (Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa, Morphine, Jon Brion), and Dean Johnston on Drums (Superhoney, Club d’Elf).
Pick up the CD and digital here. The Bandcamp purchase also includes an exclusive live remix by American electronic musician Richard Devine, unavailable anywhere else too.
EarSpace Radio Episode 11
Episode 11 of EarSpace is now online to entertain and educate you, featuring a host of new music, some golden classics, and much more in two hours of electronic explorations. If you tune into Slack City at totallyradio, you can listen to this new episode, as well as any of the previous 11 shows.
This month features music from Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan Loula Yorkɘ, Drew McDowall, Lisa Lerkenfeldt, Aphex Twin, Taylor Deupree, Brian Eno, Soundwalk Collective, The Future Sound of London, and even an unreleased tune from Autechre. Listen back here.
Zoviet France on False Falls
I was recently invited by the record label False Walls to write about a favourite record of mine, something reasonably obscure perhaps to some folks, but for me, music I’ve listened to since its release. Hopefully my words will inspire you to take a listen. As I wrote…
“Discovering music in the past was a very different adventure indeed. Hours could easily be lost browsing the racks in a record shop, chatting with the staff over the counter, listening to their recommendations. Frequent visits to familiar stores meant that staff could develop an idea of your tastes, and next time advise on items just in that might appeal.
This is exactly how Mohnomishe (1983) by Zoviet France entered my life. On a day off from university, my regular weekly haunt was the Rough Trade shop in Talbot Road, just off Portobello Road. On this occasion Nigel House, one of the owners, handed me over a copy of this extraordinary record. And when I say extraordinary, I absolutely mean that in every possible way.”
Read the full piece here.
Transmission by Salvatore Arancio
For those who might wonder what I do with my days sometimes. Well, in between writing detailed Instagram posts almost every day about art, music and culture (follow me here), working on administration and hanging out with celebrities, I also sound for films and art installations and all manner of wonderful and strange things.
Here’s a work I made with Italian artist Salvatore Arancio. It’s an environmental documentary film entitled Transmission, made by the artist at the Ceralep factory, in Saint-Vallier, France, which takes the viewers on a fascinating and abstract journey, up close and personal with the machines used to manufacture electrical insulators.
Salvatore Arancio’s video was inspired by his fascination by the cold, robotic production method used to work porcelain. Through the artist’s prism, the experience of documenting the factory’s mode of production takes on a more visionary aspect, verging on science fiction and abstraction.
The film explores the daily steps involved in transforming raw materials in the workshops into electrical insulators. I had such fun creating new sounds for every single camera shift and edit in this film. Watch it back in full here.
Radio broadcast of LEV Festival 2024
As some of you will know, in May 2024 I had the pleasure of performing at LEV Festival, now in its 18th edition! The performance was outdoors at the outstanding Laguna Boreal, Jardín Botánico Atlántico, and I performed alongside UK musician Sophia Loizou. Our live shows can now be heard in full online on Spanish radio. Listen back in full here, and try to listen outdoors in nature, to replicate the experience.
Het Concreet Tilburg
In November 2023, I joined the team at Het Concreet in Tilburg, The Netherlands for a week-long residency. Het Concreet is a Dutch sound collective dedicated to finding new sounds by experimenting with analogue electronic devices, magnetic tape and acoustics. Their analogue ambitions are rooted in their studio space, where they seek to find new meanings of sound by working with techniques that have become largely obsolete in today’s world. Their main instrument is magnetic tape.
Now you can enjoy my complete show I performed there at the end of my residency. I used the Elektor Formant, Lore Mill Keyed Mosstone and Make Noise Strega synthesisers, and a Tascam 8-Track reel-to-reel tape recorder. I resampled old cassettes of mine from the 1980s, introducing a dark and intense industrial vibe to the proceedings, but it all remained distinctly analogue. It was a computer free zone!
It’s dirty, it’s noisy and gritty. Play it loud whilst wearing dark clothing. And please, no smiling. This is serious music! 🙂
Reverb at 180 Strand
Reverb continues at 180 Strand in London, the exhibition with site-specific audio-visual installations and sonic experiences, from artists including Theaster Gates, Es Devlin, Julianknxx, Kahlil Joseph, Caterina Barbieri, Stan Douglas, Virgil Abloh, Cecilia Bengolea, Jeremy Deller, William Kentridge, Jenn Nkiru, Hito Steyerl, Carsten Nicolai and Gabriel Moses.
You can admire my handsome new vinyl LP with British artist and designer Ben Kelley on display, which is apparently being pressed at this very moment and will be available soon.
I’m off to New York City in July for some exploring and catching up with friends, then back into the studio. I need to finish mastering the next release on Alltagsmusik, which looks likely to be a song collaboration with a Sheffield based singer, amongst many other projects.
As always, thanks for your support.
Warmest wishes
Professor Scanner
::: listen :::
Deathprod: Let Me Be Forever Animal (Supersound)
Fred Frith: Guitar Solos / Fifty (Week-End)
Field Lines Cartographer: Portable Reality Generator (DiN)
Tristan Perich: Open Symmetry (Erased Tapes)
::: read :::
Cornelius Cardew: Play for Today (Drawing Room)
James Nice: The Durutti Column (Burning Shed)
Gilbert McCarragher: Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman’s House (Thames & Hudson)
Richard King: Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell (Faber)
::: watch :::
Petite Mamam: Céline Sciamma
Hit Man: Richard Linklater
You Hurt My Feelings: Nicole Holofcener
Lights in the Dusk: Aki Kaurismaki