The idea of The Editor

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Was over at Joshua Van Tassel‘s site the other day where he’d posted an article by Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood talking about the release of ‘In Rainbows‘. It’s a good article about an important event and amongst his recollections about the release of the record and the ideas behind it is an interesting comment about the delivery or discovery of (new) music.

‘I understand that we have become our own broadcasters and distributors, but I miss the editorialisation of music, the curatorial influences of people like John Peel or a good record label’

It seems like a strange idea in an age where music is everywhere but I think this is a really good point. LastFM, I guess, does this a little but can in no way replace the careful selection of stuff that people find exciting and in turn reveal it to you. I know that these things can still exist but to what degree in this day? And is the platform for someone like a Peel or a Creation Records around today for them to develop?

What’s that sound?

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Last week as I was getting ready to retire for the evening I could hear a strange noise drifting over the gardens. I thought maybe it was a fox or the weasel that we found under next door’s shed the other year.Or maybe one of the neighbour’s chickens. It had an eerie feel to it, so I immediately grabbed the Zoom H4n, popped the Rycote on top and set out to investigate.

In the pitch black the sound takes on a whole new feel. It sounded like it was coming from a couple of gardens down. I stayed as still as I could and listened as it got closer. In the recording I’m not sure if you can pick up on the sound of it moving through the garden but it was such a strange feeling – crouching down in the dark and listening as it got nearer and nearer but being unable to see it.

What do you think it is?

within the gossamer golden harp strings

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This Sunday just gone I went to see Susie MacMurray‘s installation ‘Promenade‘ at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. Kedleston Hall is an impossibly grand place set in beautiful countryside. The house itself is often refered to as a ‘show palace’ as it’s that grand. It’s featured in much of the film ‘The Duchess‘ with Keira Knightley, which, if you’ve ever watched it, should give you an idea of the scale of grandness. Looking at her website, a lot of MacMurray’s work has this delicate ghost like touch mainly due, I guess, to the materials she uses. Some of it reminds me of some of Ellen Bell’s work at Wysing Arts but within different contexts.

Within the main hall between and around the marble pillars, MacMurray has wound and woven thousands of metres of metallic gold thread. The effect is quite remarkable. It creates this shimmering maze, a golden gauze across the width of the hall obscuring the view from either side so that people at either end or within the piece itself are blurred. You can peer over the top but that only heightens the sense of otherness as you then see what the piece is actually made of.

Walking around and within you’re sense of the space is totally altered as the eye follows the new lines spun within the space. I really wanted to reach out and pluck the threads – like some massive strung harp or zither. I could only imagine the noise it would make would be some giant phasing micro tonal glimmering drone, Phill Niblock like.

My crappy phone couldn’t take any decent photos of it. In fact the programme for the piece kind of let’s the installation down as it’s impossible to capture the effect of the work in dull autumn light when photographed. Thankfully, there is a film of it that shows the piece through time-lapse photography (see at the end of this post).

We spoke about the piece afterwards and all said how wonderful it was – uplifting, fascinating. How it transformed the space into something completely different. Walking down the stairs coming out of the hall, notes about the work, written by visitors onto packing labels, have been tied to the bannister using different coloured ribbons, which in itself look interesting.

The only negative for me about the work is the incredibly short time period it’s there for – 9 days! I’m usually the first to champion ephemerality but 9 days gives no chance for word of mouth promotion which seems such a shame. I only hope that over this period enough quality photographs of the piece emerge online.

EDIT!EDIT!EDIT! I’ve been contacted by Kedleston Hall (see comments below) pointing out that ‘Promenade’ is not on for 9 days but is running from 19th July to 11th Ocotber so PLENTY OF TIME TO SEE THIS!! GO NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

….walking

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Grey autumnal Sunday. Warm but no chance of the sun ever breaking through the grey.

Walking towards Arnesby.

Light breeze ruffles the hedgerows but everything is quiet.

One of those days that no matter what camera you use (and these are with a particularly crappy phone cam) the light would not show you the colours. But their subtlety in this light, is their beauty to this eye.

Nearly back home. A glimpse through a window to a window somewhere else.

Hand Made Joy

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It came from over the sea through the postal service

Hand made joy

I spend a lot of time window shoppng on Etsy. Normally for t-shirts involving bicycles or birds. Sometime bicycles and birds. I’ve been having a bit of a zine binge lately and just got these off of Aijung Kim (who I think is based in Richmond, Virginia). I love the way these zines turn something personal, an absent minded recognition noted in a pocketbook,then redrawn and considered and illustrated later. Brings a whole new life to it all.

I am admittedly a bit giddy for the hand made but when they are diary-esque based like these (even the poetry zines have that kind of feel) they become really touching, comforting even. Check out her Etsy shop here


(I obviously can relate to this image^^^^^)

Combining

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What suprised me most was the sudden change of colour. Before I reached the edge of the field it was a rectangle of pale yellow, shining in the hazy sun. After I crossed the road, squeezed beside the bus shelter and the hedge, it had changed.

Now there were rows of green grass in between rows of yellow – yellow that now looked dirty, drab. The green looked new, fresh even but that could have just been my surprise. I took a few photos as the combine swung around to do another row and then got the recorder out.

The recording starts as the combine makes it’s way to the end of the field then returns up to the top where I was standing. You get to hear the traffic as it travels along the road behind me then as the combine returns, I turn around and capture the tractor and trailer coming back to collect the harvested grain.

Autumn’s introduction

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A Saturday wedding and ringing bells drift from the church, a mile distant, with the wind – rustling the leaves and laying a shimmering percussive blanket upon which sparrows and blue tits lay random couplets of ‘cheep’s and ‘tsee’s. From behind me the constant drone of a combine working it’s way around the fields fades in and out.

There’s a colder edge to the air in the morning. Only two swallows on the telephone lines as I cycled into work, a quieter burbling sound – soon they’ll all be gone to overwinter where ever it is they will overwinter. Africa? Fat mushrooms peek out of the roadside grass, brown frilled egdes, insect mangled domes or just dirty and grey from road debris. The morning’s are darker, night comes sooner.

Seasons’ beginnings and endings change and merge. Last year we climbed hay bales in mid August whilst this year they’re only just bringing them in. Late spring, early winter? We had a glorious September last year. Dry, bright and sunny. Trees have been turning in August in some places, both at home and work the gardens all have a littering of dry, wrinkled leaves.

Autumn’s introduction. Do you notice it too?

Daydreaming about tape. Again.

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I was sitting on the sofa, my arm laid back over my neck and I could here the ticking of my watch over my shoulder (I like this sound, it means I can still hear things). I was watching a program about John Lennon, he was making recordings with Yoko and I started to think about tape. Again.

The slow spinning wheels. How all that sound is particles on magnetic tape. How if I put my finger there, it will slow down and a whole new sound is made, my understanding of it altered. The fact I can see it doing something is an explanation in itself.

I have a device no bigger than a pencil case I’d have taken to school. It will record things with such clarity, it will record many things at once. It is convenient and practical and all the other things that digital technology has created. But that’s it. It has a counter but it’s it’s just numbers on a screen and inside it’s just numbers – streams of zeroes and ones and ones and zeroes.

I want to feel particles and atoms, here the whir, the drag of the belt. A surface I can write the date on. Something that digital can not replace.

Old news

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Stumbled upon this again the other day. I made a tape last year and these lovely people wrote about it. Butterfly Polite are a wonderful group, you should give them some of your time.

I thought home taping had already killed music.

This week, for the first time in some years, I bought a new album on tape – Peter Wyeth’s album “Safe, Sweet, Happy Journeys”, and lovely it is too – being as beautiful and delicate as Peter always is, and as hissy as tapes always were.

I thoroughly appreciate the two-fingers-to-the-world attitude implied by the decision to release it on cassette only, but also applaud the (perhaps unintended) effect on the listener. By asking me to go to the extra effort of setting up (or remembering how to use) a tape player, then I am more inclined to sit and listen to it, rather than pop it on passively. Also the short playing time per side means a concentrated listen is not an unreasonable thing to ask of this listener. I have often decried the CD as killing music through nothing other than the format itself encouraging long albums of musical wallpaper to put on whilst you iron. Here Peter Wyeth has said “you shall not iron, you shall try to remember what the ‘NR’ and ‘Type II’ switches on your tape deck do – and once you have worked that out you shall need to have a sit down and a rest. Whilst you are sitting, why not listen to this relaxing music”.