peter wyeth

I’ve just come back from a week away on the North Norfolk coast, a place very close to my heart. Whilst there, I found myself thinking a lot about permanence and ephemerality in the things we make – be that art, architecture, even communities. When you’re in a landscape that changes twice a day, where certain spaces only exist at the discretion of the tides and you see it’s effect on everything, I don’t think you can help but think about it.

On coming back home, I was glad to see and hear La Cosa Preziosa ( Susanna Caprara ) latest minature kind of touch upon this.

You should totally check her Soundcloud out and follow her on Twitter too.

I’m playing the Leicester Fringe Festival Thursday 16th August at The Cookie Jar in Leicester. Better still, one of my most favouritist singers is playing – the wonderful Natalie Squance.

On the morning of the Monday 25th June just gone, I was walking along the beach of Charlestown, Cornwall. Working along the small bank made by the tide heaping up the washed and rubbed stones of pebbles and sand. As I went further away from the harbour wall, the sounds changed. Along side the waves came the sounds of birds from the cliff. The wave sound became softer, the displaced pebbles from my footsteps more pronounced. I picked up two flat pieces of clay and struck them together but you couldn’t hear them at all.

The following morning, back at home in Leicester, I was hanging out the washing, 0645, in the morning sun. Garden birds, the hum of traffic from the motorway carried on the faint breeze, me dropping clothes pegs. A different sound all around but just as vivid as the morning before.

Later that evening, I sat in a room rubbing two stones that I’d collected on the beach that previous morning together and listened to how the sound moved around the room. Which obviously lead me to Akio Suzuki.

It’s no secret that I, like many, miss the ‘objectness’ of hard format releases – the sleeve, the notes, the pictures, the format itself (I’ve never truly got into CDs), the everything . As we go more and more digital, trying to make up this gap – and it is a gap – is something I often think about. So I was pleased to read about the latest 12k releasse from Simon Scott. ‘Below Sea Level‘ comes in a variety options but the thing that makes it interesting for me is the option of being able to buy the download and a book.

Then there is this release from Celer and Machinefabriek. Again, my love of postcards is pulled upon here and it’s a particular idea I’ve had myself for a while but I love the way this has been put together. You can buy from Machinefabriek’s Bandcamp site here – Machinefabriek Bandcamp

One of the best things about making and doing art is making connections with people. It’s especially nice when one of those connections leads to something entirely different. Sir Magpie, the working name of Ana Stefaniak, has used my song Sing to Me (from Humming New Time) for her graduation animation. I really like the dreamy elements of her work so am chuffed to bits she chose some of my work to accompany this. Be sure to visit her site to see more of it.

Still trying to record. Still nothing concrete to show. Recording a conventional song has proved to be really difficult. But I still can’t quite let it go……

Managed to remember to take my Zoom into Leicester a few weeks ago and recorded some of the spaces I went to. The one below is of me walking around Leicester market in the City Centre – a definite cultural highlight of Leicester and an ever changing place in itself. If you ever visit Leicester you must wander through the market.

You should also check out the Leicester Soundmap