Author: dafyddroberts
Richard Craig
Hailing from Clydebank, Scotland, Richard Craig has come to establish himself as one of the leading performers of new music. He has performed alongside ensembles such as MusikFabrik Köln, Klangforum Wien, and as a soloist he has been the dedicatee of many works for flute. As a composer/improviser he has been involved in an ongoing project with feedback called AMP/AL. His discography includes two monographs (INWARD and VALE both released on the métier label), and he has performed in numerous radio broadcasts for the BBC, WDR Köln, YLE Finland, Radio France, Radio Nacional de España, Swedish Radio, ARTE and Icelandic RUV. His own music is available on bandcamp.
The Sound Projector
Very interesting review from the mighty Ed Pinsent of the last Listen to the Voice of Fire. See here: http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2018/03/17/heat-light-and-fire/
Insightful comments regarding the split of noisy to introspective in the program as well as the reckoning of the (over) long AV piece, spell binding but whatever happened to agreed fifteen minutes, some imbalance perhaps.
Ed came all the way up to back of beyond Aberystwyth, well as did many of you, and suffered the regular as clockwork hitches on Arriva Trains Wales. But, what a pleasant fellow and we all enjoyed the Light of Asia on the night before. Great company and surprisingly tasty food.
Ahh, let’s do it all again…
Toshimaru Nakamura
Rhodri Davies
Angharad Davies
She is an associate artist at Cafe Oto, is a member of Cranc, Common Objects and Apartment House, been artist in residence at Q-02, and played live with Tony Conrad in the Turbine Room at the Tate Modern. Other collaborations have featured the likes of John Butcher, Steve Beresford, Laura Cannell, Daniela Cascella, Anat Ben David, Rhodri Davies, Matt Davis, Richard Dawson, Julia Eckhardt, Kazuko Hohki, Roberta Jean, Lina Lapelyte, Dominic Lash, Tisha Mukarji, Andrea Neumann, Rie Nakajima, Anie O’Dwyer, Okkuyng Lee, Tim Parkinson, J.G.Thirlwell, Silvia Tarozzi, Stefan Thut, Deborah Walker, Paul Whitty, Manfred Werder, Birgit Ulher, Taku Unami and she’s released records on Absinth Records, Another Timbre, Potlatch and Confrontrecords.
Ed Wright
Edward Wright is a UK based composer who was born in Buckinghamshire in 1980 which makes him very old to some people and not all that old to others. He completed a practice based PhD in music in 2010, focusing on combining electroacoustic and instrumental forces with Professor Andrew Lewis at Bangor University.
His work is mainly focused towards the electroacoustic end of the musical spectrum although he writes for and plays ‘real’ instruments as well. Highlights include; performances overseas including mainland Europe and the U.S.A., ‘mention’ in the Prix Bourges for his piece Con-Chords, a number of classical commissions, and airplay on BBC Radio 1 and S4C television. Ed also curates the Oscilloscope concert series and performs as part of the electronic trio Accretion Entropy.
Ed lives in North Wales with Emma, their daughter Alena, and finds it very hard to write about himself in the third person.
More about Ed is here: http://www.virtual440.com/welcome
Jenn Kirby
Dr. Jenn Kirby is an Irish composer, performer, software developer and academic based in Swansea, UK. Her work ranges from instrumental composition, to electroacoustic, to laptop orchestra and the performance of live electronics. Jenn’s work explores elements of theatre, humour and subversion. Jenn works as the Programme Director for Music Performance and Production at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, where she teaches composition and music technology.
Kitchen Cynic + Pefkin = Barrett’s Dotted Beauty
Fantastic news update, Pefkin are transmuted to become Barrett’s Dotted Beauty for their Aberystwyth appearance. JW myself and Ruth were all hoping that it might happen and so it has…very excited to announce…These were and are legends of the psycke underground, do yourselves a favour and come along for these, a real treat
Barrett’s Dottled Beauty is what you get when you cross a Kitchen Cynic with a Pefkin. Nursing an obsession equally with Syd Barrett and lepidoptera, Alan Davidson and Gayle Brogan formed this duo in 2016, playing semi-improvised experimental folk, informed by their shared interest in nature, folk song and noise. “siren-esque psalms quietly stare, seduce and enchant, beguilement doesn’t begin to touch it, ghostly drone mosaics, which arrive trimmed in classicist vintage whose lineage ripples to a dawning of time whilst sonically balanced on a finite point located somewhere between the primordial psych folk utterance’s of Alphane Moon, Ghost, Our glassie Azoth and the bewitching trips of George Harrison’s ‘Blue Jay Way’. Their second album released in a limited edition of 80 in individually collaged sleeves is long sold out.
Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, one half of Glaswegian vintage synth duo Electroscope and ex-proprietor of the Boa Melody Bar mail order. She has been recording as Pefkin since 1999 and released albums on Morc, Wild Silence, Reverb Worship, Pseudoarcana, etc.
More recently she has been recording with the Kitchen Cynics’ Alan Davidson under the name Barrett’s Dottled Beauty, creating psych-folk hymnals inspired by a mutual love of folk songs and nature, and has been recording with United Bible Studies. On her own Gayle creates a dreamy rural psychedelia from looped vocals, guitar, analogue synth and violin and has received comparisons to Coil, Popul Vuh and Nico. She has just released a new album “Final Instar” inspired by moths on Siren Wire and an 8″ lathe cut on Sonido Polifonico.
Gayle played at last year’s Listen to the voice of Fire as part of Electroscope, and I couldn’t wait to have her back-prodigious and inspiring, slightly odd name Pefkin but come and check out this mesmerising psychedelia.
Exemption from meaning
This project is supported by Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation .
The pitch was to make a new piece of sound work, based on the Japanese ceramics contained in the Aberystwyth University School of Art. And to bring experimental and improvising artists together with Toshimaru Nakamura who makes his Welsh debut here in Aberystwyth in 2018-a few weeks away now!
You can see my trace here in this photo which I snapped, visiting by chance, at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge before Christmas. The pitch had been made at this point but there was someting very pleasing about seeing this particualar example.
Kyokusul no en i is a song reading festival conducted in Spring (currently held on the first Sunday of March at the Dazaifu shrine), where poets compete in their skills to create an original verse before a Japanese wine-cup which has been placed over-stream passes through its strecth on a narrow river branch. Historically, this festival was believed to have been held by the high-court members of classical China from 300 BC as a festival to wash away the impurities of spirit. It became popular in Japan from around the Heian period (794-1868).
This provided me with a burst of confidence in the project which would see several improvisers collaborating with Toshimaru Nakamura. Each would select an item from the collection and this be the basis of the ‘object score’. Amongs the collaborators are: Rhodri Davies, Greg Bevan (film) Adrew Leslie Hooker, Jenn Kirby, Mary Jacob (poet), Ed Wright, Dafydd Roberts & Toshimaru Nakamura.
With a few weeks now to run each of the collaborators choose an item from the collection to work with/respond to. With a bit of luck-respondents respond speedily (albeit at short notice) collaborator items will form the basis of an exhibition at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in March.
So the idea now is to begin to capture some words and document some of the process.
I have not decided which pot i will use, but one of the best things already has been becoming aware of just how much we have in the collections and its quality and diversity inspires.
I started -re reading Barthes’ Empire of Signs as a prelude to this project and even though this is not of istelf a research project, finding contexts and texts about this process is something I will try and capture as well-but as I am in haste this may all come afterwards. I come from a point of naievety so you may provide links and text that I should refer to. Especially around creating object and graphic scores, Barthes, improvisation and sonification.
David Hopewell
Here’s one that is a bit obscure, another find from Ed Wright’s Oscilloscope. David Hopewell improvised/performed a couple of what I thought were standout pieces, and promises to perform these again. It is understated, but this was and promises to be a finely sculpted expansive sonic landscape. Here is what he says “Two pieces featuring field recordings and live sound production using field coils capturing electromagnetic signals ‘captured from the aether'”. With the loops of experimental film that Dr Greg Bevan has curated projected o’er him this is sure to be one to watch and soak-up.