Hello
Summery greetings to you.
This last month has most certainly been an adventurous one, taking me across Europe for a variety of exploits, sonically and creatively.
May began over in Prague at the PMP Festival, working with a stellar ensemble of musicians for our live show at Dox+, which is part of this enormous multifunctional space for presenting international and Czech art, architecture and design, located in Prague’s Holešovice district. It’s situated in a renovated complex of industrial buildings from the 19th century and a truly stunning space.
Rehearsing over a couple of days we were ready to present performances of Terry Riley’s In C and La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 #7. And, believe me, when I say we were truly rocking! A capacity crowd seemed enthralled by our especially gritty versions of these two classic pieces of music.
In the interval it was a pleasure to warm up outside to Young’s Composition 1960 #2, which requires a fire to be made in front of the audience. Clearly lacking experience lighting fires though, the producers were rather over generous with the firelighters, and the flames licked high and wide! It was pretty impressive though.
This show was recorded, and in the last week we have been mixing and mastering it for a future release, so stay tuned for this.
After an early morning walk alongside the Vltava River, it was on a train to Vienna to perform at the very elegant Rote Bar in the prestigious Volkstheater, then to Bratislava for a second show with Gareth Davis, a supreme bass clarinet player and improviser. Apparently, these shows were also recorded so hope we can make some kind of release with these in the future too.
Home for a night, then it was off to Utrecht in the Netherlands to perform with a smaller ensemble, in an outdoors show at Beton-T, a short walk outside of the main city centre. We played in the early evening performing Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen (1968), in this monumental space, a large concrete slab, 3600 square metres in size, covered in graffiti and posters.
With barely time to change out my clogs and finish all the cheese I’d bought in NL, I was off to Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. Tragically, they’d recently suffered the most horrendous of floods, with the loss of 14 lives and 15,000 people displaced in the area, but amazingly Ravenna had somehow survived rather unscathed.
I was there at the invitation of the Teatro delle Albe in Ravenna, to work at Malagola, their advanced artistic centre, to focus on the themes of voice and sound in the performing arts. I joined an extraordinary lineage of visiting guests, from Alvin Curran, Meredith Monk and Joan La Barbara to work with young artists for three days in intense creative sessions.
I can’t deny that I was extremely apprehensive of what to anticipate when I arrived, uncertain of what to expect, but thankfully the sessions turned out to be a truly rewarding and beautiful experience. We listened to a wealth of music and collaborated on new works inspired by artists such as Robert Ashley, Cornelius Cardew and others.
I decided some time ago to generally agree to projects that throw me in the deep end of the swimming pool, rather than paddle comfortably at the safer end, and once again glad that I had this opportunity to learn more about myself too.
From Ravenna it was a high-octane drive to Venice, with a taxi driver who seemed to read speed limits as some kind of a mathematical equation, so if a sign read ‘70’ he would drive at 155, whilst presumably auditioning for the next Fast and the Furious movie. A night in a hotel in London followed, which could easily have won a prize for the smallest room available, with a toilet that was actually installed beneath the bathroom sink itself.
And early morning it was off on a packed Eurostar train to Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing France, once more in my guise as Professor Scanner. For those with long memories I was a Visiting Professor there now a decade ago. I returned to prepare installing an audio video work of mine in the very fabric of the building itself for the Panorama show that opens in September. More on this soon.
I was thrilled to have had an opportunity to perform live at the studio offices of Electronic Sound Magazine over in Norwich UK. I join a host of previous shows from Rival Consoles, Blancmange and others in a unique show available to watch back in full online.
I improvised a live set especially for camera. You can watch an excerpt from the set here, and for the price of a couple of cups of hipster coffee you can enjoy the full show! Watch that here.
I’ve long had an interest in performance art and so was delighted to accompany a new work from Emilia Telese and Philip Bedwell. Bergmál – Echo, that recently took place in Reykjavík, Iceland. Bergmál was designed by Telese and Bedwell to interact site-specifically with Telese’s Progressive Decay series of etchings dealing with fragility and recurring patterns within industrial waste materials. Watch it back here.
If you are in the mood for a fine arthouse film, then Medulla from Dutch director Rudi Brekelmans is now available to view on Vimeo. I scored this film, alongside my imaginary twin brother, American musician Moby. As the press release says:
“If we don’t control our urges there will be trouble”, psychiatrist Charles Dujardin explains to a young boy who attacked a girl in his class. But when Charles starts treating a fascinating, seductive female client his own self control is put to the test. His growing obsession with her causes him to start losing his grip on reality.
Michaël Pas and Astrid van Eck star in ‘Medulla’, a dark, psychological thriller about ego, power and conscience. Filmed in stark black and white and with a touch of classical film noir the off-beat directorial debut of Rudi Brekelmans is a slow burner that grows more and more tense.” Watch it back here.
I’ve recently been adding new feature writings to my website and last month added this long chat I had with the British electronic group Orbital, which you might enjoy perusing. It includes the origins story of how we met at a wedding too! Read it in full here.
I was recently honoured to feature as guest guitarist on the new album by British electronic artist The Metamorph on his new album, The Man on the 99th Floor. Out on the ever-dependable Werra Foxma label, it’s a cinematic joy, slinky, sensual and sinister in equal measure. Watch this delightful retro video clip to hear my axe skills in full flow, and pick up the full-length album here.
And whilst speaking of Werra Foxma, I’m thrilled to be performing at their debut London festival at the Water Rats in King’s Cross on Saturday 10 June, in a day of live music. Please do come along and support all the artists! Full ticket information here.
I just finished creating the soundtrack to an extraordinary project taking place in Prague this month too. The Infra-Ordinary Lap by artist Tereza Stehlikova is a site-specific participatory performance that invites you on a multi-sensory exploration of Holešovická Tržnice, framing perception and peeling the skin of the everyday to reveal hidden narratives.
The artist writes:
We spend more and more time in clinical environments, often a sterile world of a reality mediated through a screen and experienced mainly audio-visually. We take our everyday, seemingly mundane reality for granted. We have become so accustomed to it that we no longer perceive it. Equally, we take our own bodies for granted, simply accepting the information our senses feed us without questioning what is happening.
This performance is conceived as a playful experimental laboratory to help you question some of these habitual ways by framing your experience of a particular place. Through spoken and other sensory prompts, some of the hidden narratives of this unique place and its history will be revealed, while also opening up space for your own imagination.
It takes place in an outdoors market from 10-17 June. Please check the link for exact times. The score is an hour long mix of darkly ambient, atmospheric sounds, industrial and sensual. I hope that some of you can make it along. More information can be found here.
So, as you can see, it’s been rather a busy month. Somehow, in the midst of this, I also celebrated my birthday and was able to finish up a couple of short film soundtracks for artists too, but more on that next time.
I’m back off to The Netherlands and then Paris in early June, on yet more adventures, and hope to see you some of you in person one day soon.
Thanks as ever for your support
Best wishes
Professor Scanner
::: listen :::
Andrew Poppy: Ark Hive of A Live (False Walls)
Fred again.. & Brian Eno: Secret Life (Text)
Marcus Fischer: Dodecalogues (Bandcamp)
Michèle Bokanowski: Musique De Courts Métrages (Sonoris)
::: read :::
Soundwalk Collective: Evidence (Pompidou Centre)
Jim Dodge: Stone Junction (Canongate)
Howard Bergerson: Palindromes and Anagrams (Dover)
Rene Daumal: Pataphysical Essays (Wakefield Press)
::: watch :::
Sisu: Jalmari Helander
Night Sky: Holden Miller
Thirteen Lives: Ron Howard
Bodies Bodies Bodies: Halina Reijn
