Quietly launching
Over the last couple of years I’ve made various attempts at reducing my tendency towards doomscrolling. I left both facebook and twitter in part due to the negative impact it had on my wellbeing, and the inability to mitigate the constant feed of frustrating and upsetting political articles. At one point I switched to reading actual news sites instead, without feeling any better.
Looking for something less miserable to read in moments of downtime I initially tried the reddit app and a joined a few subreddits related to my interests – starting quite broadly with music, climbing, specific TV programmes and computer games, and fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. I quickly tired of the (often quite depressing) chat on the techno and electronic music production boards. Outside of my old twitter echochamber – musicians and producers I liked and mostly knew, quite a diverse bunch and generally pretty right on – the wider electronic music community on reddit was blokey, entitled and often argumentative. Bouldering subreddits were usually too technical and dry. There are only so many Half-Life memes I want to read on a daily basis. So I eventually gravitated towards the D&D boards, finally narrowing down to one of the DM forums. A good balance of in-depth answers to obscure questions about lore; agony aunt style threads on problem players and how to deal with out-of-game social interactions; and useful tips for running a game. As with many things on the internet nowadays, and this may be a topic I return to, enshittificaion reared its ugly head. Changes to the back end of reddit meant moderators’ jobs would become exponentially more time consuming, and various boards were set to private, essentially going on strike to protest the profit-driven changes negatively affecting the communities.
I spent some time working though daily crosswords, and had a bit of a self improvement drive on duolingo, before deciding to try an older approach to sourcing bite-sized reading material, the RSS feed. I use an Android app called Feeder which is simple and handy, allowing copy-pasting of a URL to look up a feed to add. It took me a while to find blogs I wanted to follow – and I had lots of help from folks on Mastodon with some great recommendations. I’m finally at the stage I have an app I can open to read stuff I’m interested in, that’s not trying to sell me anything or start an argument. Reading blogs about people’s niche interests is incredibly satisfying. This morning in the dentist’s waiting room I learned all about the workings of a mechanical aircraft computer. The blogosphere feels like a wholesome space to visit in periods of downtime, to me. I find people’s enthusiastic posts encouraging. I like having a feed of bits of info about new weird music releases or new synth modules and software.
I’m currently in a position where I’m doing a lot more writing than I’ve probably ever done. I’m in the second year of a PhD, which is a practice-research project looking at the affordances of my extended turntable system. There’s lots of practical work, spending time building new interfaces and soundsources, making and recording music, collaborating with other artists, and performing live. But there’s a lot of writing too. I’m keeping notes relating to most of my activities in regular reflective journals. Writing notes and ideas as they occur to me. Paraphrasing other writers’ concepts to help me make sense of them. Plus the various administrative documents, literature reviews and reports that the study requires. So far in 2024 I feel as though I’ve spent most of my time writing, having finished co-writing an article for a journal, completed a paper for a conference and written another abstract. The process is new to me, and I’ve found it quite difficult – in part due to feeling quite unconfident, due to my inexperience.
So here we are, at my decision to begin blogging. I’m posting for these reasons: to contribute something back to the community that is the blogosphere, and to give myself more practice writing and putting it out there. I’ve been inspired by recent posts on blissblog and disquiet and it feels like now is as good a time as any.
Previously I used the feed on my website for news updates, posting for every single gig, release, radio broadcast and mor. There were nearly 500 posts on here, mostly of a couple of lines of info and a link. I stopped doing that during the Covid pandemic, and in setting up this blog I’ve got rid of those articles. The past posts I have kept are ones where I’ve written a bit more, both selections of music for quest mixes: a podcast about turntablism and a radio show about mechanical music. Going forward I’m aiming to post a couple of times a week with thoughts related to sound and music, things I’m working on in the studio, recommendations for books, podcasts and music and whatever else might be seem relevant. It’s likely this blog will take a while to settle into its groove, but I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
poumons-punaises, Internet Public Radio, Tracklist
A guest mix I put together for Boris Allenou’s radio show on Internet Public Radio. Broadcast on 21st November 2022.
Link: [mixcloud]
Tracklist
Tom Ward – Transient Signalling At A Distance – Lullaby
shawné michaelain holloway – XXXSTINCTIØN – XXXST1NCT+1ØN.SØC1Ø- 20151129 2329.wav
Bone Music – Live Trash – Heritage
Dunning & Brosamer – Glocken – Underlandet (live with Lisa Schlenker)
Amselysen – Organe Solaire – Solarize (Ketamine)
African Ghost Valley – CRWL – CARON COR
Elif Yalvac – L’appel du Vide – Desynthesization
Shit Creek – Magnetic Garden – Magnetic Garden 7
Yuma Takeshita – semi-automusic 4 – untitled4-1
These Are The Breaks – podcast interview and mixtape
Mariam Rezaei interviewed me about using turntables to make music, for her podcast These Are The Breaks. Listen to the hour long chat here, which is followed by an hour of turntable music. Below is a tracklist for the mix and some links and info about each of the pieces I chose.
TRACKLIST:
Chin Weeper – Virucidal
Bredbeddle – Feely
Sculpture – Projected Music (‘Tom Richards – Comma and’ remix)
Andrea Borghi – Superelief 6
eRikm – Rose
Hannah Dargavel-Leafe – Fore Main Mizzen part 1
Maria Chavez – New Sounds presents Maria Chavez video edit
Copper Sounds – Side
Thomas Brinkmann – 0111
Ian Watson – Only Surface Noise Is Real
Faith Coloccia & Philip Jeck – Myconbiont
Marina Rosenfeld – Hard Love
Myriam Bleau – coastin
Institut Fuer Feinmotorik – Ohne Titel
Pure Rave – Pure Rave vol 3 (edit)
Graham Dunning – not yet titled (MottoMotto, forthcoming)
Eris Drew – Hold Me (T4T Embrace mix)
Putting together this mix I uncharacteristcally spent a lot of time on preparation, and as a result ended up with far too many tracks to comfortably fit into an hour. As such I’ve left our far much more than I’ve included. At one point I remembered the story of Jeff Mills mixing over 50 records in a half-hour Radio 1 set, and as I wanted to mention his incredible DJ performances as a point of influence anyway, considered doing something along the same lines. In the end I’m glad I didn’t as it would, as I’m sure you can guess, have turned out rubbish. Instead I chose a smaller bunch of tracks for how well they would work together, and have given them a bit more time to hear them properly. Some notes below about each and why I’ve chose them.
Chin Weeper – Virucidal
GRIPE 01 / Gripe Records
Glitchy vinyl cutups rom a new label based in Lancashire releasing lathe cuts and sound collages using anti-records. I like it with a track like this where I can’t quite work out how it’s been made – it has some of the feel of a cutup record but more deliberately pieced together. The label is run by Paul Nataraj (whose PHD was on his practice of etching text into vinyl records) and Daniel Watson, who collaborated on this release.
https://www.paulnataraj.uk/
https://www.instagram.com/defectiveobjective/
https://griperecords.bandcamp.com/album/gripe-01
Bredbeddle – Feely
Stackes / Fractal Meat Cuts
Using looping records and careful combinations of sounds from Rebecca Lee’s music collection, I like the unusual joining of recordings from different times and places, unexpected meetings. It’s sampling on a macro level, stripped of the technical purely technical apsect that that approach ususally favours.
Fractal Meat Cuts is the tape label I run releasing mine and other people’s music, some of it made with turntables.
http://www.rebeccalee.info/
https://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/stackes
Sculpture – Projected Music (‘Tom Richards – Comma and’ remix)
Projected Reworks / Psyche Tropes
This remix came with a release in the format of a five inch picture disk with a series of locked grooves of music by Dan Hayhurst – the zoetrope animation cells on the disk by Reuben Sutherland, the other half of the duo Sculpture. Their live shows are amazing hands-on AV happenings, with Reuben’s turntable animations and Dan’s psychedlic playback-media collages.
Tom’s remix here uses his signiture homemade drum machines and synths alongside his voltage-controlled turntables, which he can sequence and animate in sync with the mix.
https://plasticinfinite.bandcamp.com/album/projected-music
https://psychetropes.bandcamp.com/album/projected-reworks
Andrea Borghi – Superelief 6
Superelief / Hemisphäreの空虚
Expert in textural sound, Andrea’s compositions are rich, dense soundscapes of atomised, pontillist noises. He uses modified turntbales to play discs made of things like marble and carved granite, alongside recordings of already intricate sources like crackling fires.
https://andreaborghi.com/
https://hemispharenokukyo.bandcamp.com/album/superelief
eRikm – Rose
L’art de la fuite / Sonoris
This is from an album of turntable bedroom-recording compostiions made in the mid-90s. Recorded using three second hand decks, direct to four-track cassette and mixed on hi-fi speakers, it has a warm, flattened sound. Short loops become a drone and the fast rhythm becomes hypnotic.
https://erikm.com/
https://erikm.bandcamp.com/album/lart-de-la-fuite-1995
Hannah Dargavel-Leafe – Fore Main Mizzen part 1
A sound piece made of recordings on a ship (hence the name referring to its three masts), this composition isn’t strictly a turntable piece, but it was released as an artist edition on vinyl. Hannah’s live performances relating to this work used a simple two-decks-and-mixer DJ setup with two dubplates of the composite sounds. Limiting the options for the performance to two sounds at a time, volume and EQ per channel, plus manipulations on the decks (speed, direction etc) leads to intersting choices of combination and a minimal, uncluttered soundscape.
I was also pleased recording this record to my computer to put into the mix that the record skipped at the end, looping itself especially for this mix.
https://www.hannahdargavel-leafe.co.uk/Fore-Main-Mizzen-edition
Maria Chavez – New Sounds presents Maria Chavez video edit
This audio is from a short performance Maria did to camera, following an interview for New Sounds. Unlike many live performers Maria doesn’t release recordings of her shows – the live sound sculptures she creates are meant for the audiences experiencing them and don’t trasnlate in the same way to fixed media. As such it’s a bit unfair of me to include an edit in this mix so I hope she’ll forgive me. Here Maria is playing broken record pieces using The Rake double needle, Invented by Randal Sanden Jr.
Seeing Maria perform a handful of times and learning more about her work has made me rethink lots of assumptions about music, performance and sound art, far beyond the use of the turnable.
http://mariachavez.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruDZM-mrTpA
Copper Sounds – Side
A Regular Pattern A Regular Pattern / Fractal Meat Cuts
The Bristol duo play copper disks, ceramic pots, etchings and dubplates on their multi-turntable setups. The turntable’s inherent rhythm generating and looping are a the fore in a lot of their work, with all the mess and noise that comes with it. To quote their website: “Realising that if you put anything on a record player it sounds (good).”
This is another tape I put out on Fractal Meat.
https://www.coppersounds.co.uk/
https://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/a-regular-pattern-a-regular-pattern
Thomas Brinkmann – 0111
Klick / Max Ernst
Full album of record crackle rhythms made from slicing patterns into records and playing them on the decks. I love the bare-bones approach on this record, focusing on the physicality of the modified records rather than the sounds recorded on them.
http://www.max-ernst.de/
https://www.discogs.com/Thomas-Brinkmann-Klick/release/34167
Ian Watson – Only Surface Noise Is Real
Only Surface Noise is Real / artist edition
An artist edition of a 7″ single-sided, etched resin record, with a warning label that its likely to damage your record player. The edition comes with a photo-book showing the process of making the disk and a CD of what the content of the record would sound like without the surface noise.
https://linktr.ee/ian_watson
https://ianwatson.bandcamp.com/album/only-surface-noise-is-real
Faith Coloccia & Philip Jeck – Myconbiont
Stardust / touch
A collaborative project of recordings and remixes exchanged remotely.
“cassette recordings from 2015-2018 remixed using dubplates of Faith’s mixes and additional recordings by Philip Jeck in Liverpool, UK, 2020.” Philip Jeck’s live sets are magical, dusty, ambient trips, using crappy pedals and keyboards alongside portable record players and disks. This collaboration for me demonstrates the intimacy that can come from working with recorded media, even across continents.
https://philipjeck.com/
https://philipjeck.bandcamp.com/album/stardust
Marina Rosenfeld – Hard Love
Pa/HardLove – Room 40
In performances Marina uses dubplates of her own recordings, manipulating the sounds via the turntbales. This piece features Warrior Queen (Vocals) and Okkyung Lee (cello) as the album version of an installation project by the same name. Some of her other works use choirs of teenagers, or women playing guitars with nail varnish bottles. Here the live sound and electronics create a chasmic/cosmic dancehall atmosphere which is both cleanly melodic and tactile with its deep subs.
https://www.marinarosenfeld.com/pahard-love
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/p-a-hard-love
Myriam Bleau – coastin
Lumens & Profits / Where To Now
This peice uses Myriam’s multiple 12″ spinning tops which trigger samples she’s collated and loaded. Whilst there’s no actual stylus, tone arm or platter, the spinning disks are manipulated by hand and create tactile, sample-based sound collages. So it’s nearly the same. Mariam’s work referneces hip-hop sampling and turntable, tactile beat making made abstract.
https://wheretonow.bandcamp.com/album/lumens-profits
Institut Fuer Feinmotorik – Ohne Titel
Various – Staubgold / Staubgold
One of the groups people kept telling me about but it took ages to track them down, they use multiple turntables with no records, instead using the mechanics of the decks to twang elastic bands or play the platter to create rhythms and grooves. This is sort of brash but fun at the same time, reminds me of a contraption that might turn up in an episode of Magic Roundabout.
https://staubgold.bandcamp.com/album/staubgold
Pure Rave – Pure Rave vol 3 (edit)
Pure Rave Vol 3 / self release
Early albums are mixtapes of live jams, with multiple overlapping loops, driven by rhythm. Some of their newer relases are remix/rework collabortions. Forcing the records they play to loop with steel bowls on the decks, they use the turntable’s capacity to make rhythms and loops with the semi-random sampling it brings. One of my favourite turntable projects at the moment.
“Pure Rave, a collective based in Detroit, Michigan, is an ongoing experiment in “chance dance”. Using various prepared turntables, “damaged” records, the occasional drum machine, the effect is an indeterminate arrangement of patterns and rhythmic sonic collage.”
https://purerave.bandcamp.com/album/vol-3
Graham Dunning – [not yet titled]
MottoMotto, forthcoming
A mechanical techno tune recorded in the studio – part of a series where I was live streaming the whole recoring process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmstjNFeQxQ
Eris Drew – Hold Me (T4T Embrace mix)
Eris Drew & Octo Octa – Devotion EP / Naive Trax
Included here really for her refreshing approach to DJing (also its a great tune). Scratching for house and techno DJs seems to have long since fallen by the wayside, but Eris Drew happily drops scratch sections into her vinyl only sets. The recent B2B fabric compilation with Octo Octa has tracks equally drawn from the 90s and now mixed in together and this seems to me one of the exciting things about the way dance music is constantly recycling itself and drawing on its own history to make new paths. Also a story Eris recounted in an interview about playing a vinyl set and the tone arm skipping all the way to the label of the record, making an abrupt, abrasive roar – it should have been a disaster, the last thing you’d want to happen as a Dj – through the huge club PA it sounded like thunder and the crowd went wild.
https://naivetrax.bandcamp.com/album/eris-drew-octo-octa-devotion-ep
https://ra.co/features/3352
The noise of the machine itself: mechanical music and the avant garde – radio show for RTM.FM
Twang Achoo Clang Oooff is a regular broadcast of artist radio shows on RTM.FM: RTM is a radio station based in Thamesmead, SE London, run by the artist space TACO! as a platform for community-produced culture, debate, art and music.
My show The noise of the machine itself: mechanical music and the avant garde is a meander through strange and unusual mechanical music over the last 100 or so years. Full info about each of the pieces below, with bandcamp links to the newer releases.
Tune in on Saturday 13th June at 8pm at https://rtm.fm/
—
Full show now available to listen to here: [mixcloud]
The noise of the machine itself: mechanical music and the avant garde.
With the invention of recorded music, machines which played the instruments themselves – such as fairground organs, player pianos, music boxes and barrel organs – went quickly out of fashion. Through the 20th century as music had the opportunity to become avant garde, the music machines were left behind. Where gramophones, tape recorders and turntables had an important role to play in the development of experimental music, there are fewer examples from the world of the fairground organ. This mix brings together various flavours of unusual mechanical music from the last 100 or so years up to today.
1. The Mighty Marenghi Fairground Organ – I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman
From the 1970 album The Mighty Marenghi – Fair Ground Organ
“In this age of space travel and televised entertainment the simple pleasures of the old fashioned fairground seem remote, but the nostalgia of its magic glitter, its noise and bustle, the clatter of the machinery of its rides and its sham opulence which gave endless delight and pleasure to crowds, is immediately awakened when we hear the music of the traditional fairground organ.” – album liner notes
Fairground organs were always set up to play popular songs of the day – it was unusual for music to be composed specifically for the instruments. The instruments were designed to be loud, brash and draw attention to themselves. There’s an odd layering of nostalgia and novelty in this track – the song playing here was only released three years previous to the recording, so not contemporary with the 1903 build of the machine, though with its reference to WWI it is itself nostalgic. A novelty song played on a novelty machine.
2. György Ligeti – Musica ricercata: No. 8, Vivace – Energico (Adaptation for Barrel Organ)
from the album György Ligeti Edition, Vol. 5 by Jürgen Hocker, Pierre Charial, Francoise Terrioux
Written in the early 1950s and typical of Ligeti’s later frenetic sound, this adaptation for a mechanical device brings precision to its playing. A rare setting of an avant garde piece on a mechanical instrument.
3. Conlon Nancarrow, Study for Player Piano No. 21 (Canon X)
Youtube video by Juergen Hocker, May 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2gVhBxwRqg
“Recorded with the Ampico Bösendorfer Grand in the possession of Juergen Hocker, which was restored under the supervision of Nancarrow.”
Nancarrow used player pianos in order to compose pieces which would be impossible to play for a human pianist. A player piano is programmed using a piano roll – a roll of card with holes punched in it, which allow pneumatic switches to play piano notes. As such it’s a fully acoustic instrument. Most piano rolls include a green line to tell the operator when to change the master tempo, as such meaning there is some playability in the instrument, it’s still not entirely automated and the operator can introduce some character.
4. Mikael Ericsson playing the Millophonia
youtube video by Graham Dunning, uploaded 8th July 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm23yms8BcI&t=1s
The Millophonia is an experimental pipe organ built into a 100 year old windmill in Sweden by the artist Mikael Ericsson. The machine itself is bespoke, built from parts from old dismantled pipe organs and player pianos. The millophonia has no keyboard or accessible player controls, instead Erikson plays the piano roll itself – shuffling the timeline back and forth like a scratch DJ with a turntable, or covering and uncovering the organ pipes’ mouths to start and stop their sounding.
https://www.harpartlab.se/kvarnofon1_eng.html
5. Mammoth Beat Organ – Song for Chimney Stacks
from Dunning & Underwood – The Blow Vol.5 released by Front & Follow, February 2019
https://fandf.bandcamp.com/album/the-blow-volume-5
Mammoth Beat Organ is a modular, mechanical music contraption, designed as a two-player, semi-autonomous musical instrument. It plays unusual, sometimes erratic compositions drawing on drone music, minimalist repetition and fairground organ techniques.
http://www.mammothbeatorgan.co.uk/
6. Aerodrones x Javier Bustos – (frag CICLO P#1 Casa Abasto 07/6/2015)
youtube video, uploaded june 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRhitGoTm_Q
Aerodrones is a large instrument using balloons and a footpump to play reeds and pipes, shown as a sound installation and a playable instrument. “Balloons, valves, bellows and hoses make up a musical machine that requires the performer’s body to function as both a motor and an operator. ”
Javier Bustos is a sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
https://javierbustos.com.ar/Aerodrones
7. Marcel Duchamp – Sculpture Musicale (Musicboxes version by Petr Kotik)
“According to Arturo Schwarz, the piece was written sometime during 1912 – 1920 /21, although 1913 is the most probable year. The Musical Sculpture is similar to the Fluxus pieces of the early 1960s. These works combine objects with performance, audio with visual, known and unknown factors, and elements explained and unexplained. A realization of such a piece can result in an event / happening, rather than a performance.”
http://www.ubu.com/sound/duchamp.html
8. Rie Nakajima – Bells
From the album Fusuma, released November 2019 by Tsss Tapes. https://rienakajima.bandcamp.com/album/fusuma
Simple machines made of things like motors pinging bowls and slowly circling whistles that grind around the floor. Single devices become a swarm as the artist introduces new units – they behave like micro-bots, organisms each making their own path.
http://www.rienakajima.com/
9. Tim Shaw – Gorky Park Carillion – Moscow, Russia
From the album of field recordings, Impossible Music: https://timshaw.bandcamp.com/album/impossible-music
Mechanical bells rung daily from the church in the famous park.
https://tim-shaw.net/
10. Sarah Angliss – Needle
From the album Air Loom:
https://sarahangliss.bandcamp.com/album/air-loom
Sarah makes music using various home made instruments including the “robotic carillon, an instrument she devised and built to play bells at inhuman speeds, creating a haze of delicate, metallic sound.”
https://www.sarahangliss.com/
11. Sarah Farmer – Organised sound (by Gloggomobil, record player, timers and found objects)
Sound installation: Youtube video, uploaded July 2010
“The Gloggomobil functioned as programmable barrel organs, triggering a hammering action which hit the objects (glasses) and therefore made them resonate. The adapted record player acted as a wet finger to a wine glass, again causing the object to resonate at its natural frequency. A motion sensor timer switch caused the electronic objects to stop and start, adding a rhythmic structure to the sounds, which were partly arranged by the artist following existing musical and mathematical systems, and partly dictated by the technologies used.”
http://www.sarahmfarmer.co.uk
12. Jean Tinguely – Sound Sculpture f
Mp3 from ubuweb sound
Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) made large scale mechanical sound sculptures including motors, pulleys, wheels and cogs. The complex systems were deliberately ramshackle and some were designed to fall apart and self-destruct.
http://www.ubu.com/sound/tinguely.html
13. Daniel Padden & Sarah Kenchington – Tapered Things
from the album The Bellow Switch by Daniel Padden & Sarah Kenchington
https://danielpadden.bandcamp.com/album/the-bellow-switch
“‘The Bellow Switch’ features the remarkable sounds of Sarah Kenchington’s mechanical instruments. All the instruments were played by Sarah, and the sounds were then recorded, edited and arranged by Daniel Padden.”
Sarah Kenchington’s contraptions form something between a fairground organ and a one-man-band setup; part pedal-powered, using pipes, buckets and a barrel sequencer to play a variety of musical instruments.
https://algomech.com/2017/artists/sarah-kenchington/
14. Pierre Bastien – Rail at a Liar
from the 2019 album Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle
https://pierrebastienmarionette.bandcamp.com/album/tinkle-twang-n-tootle
Pierre Bastien uses mechano machines alongside homemade instruments and household objects to produce surrealist compositions.
15 . Ignacio Rodriguez Llinares & Raul Cantizano – Pelicano Mecanico & guitar on the streets of Seville
Youtube video from Juan Gonzalez, posted December 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG4aESU4dI4
Ignacio Rodriguez Llinares’ machine the Pelicano Mecanico makes flamenco rhythms mechanically. A series of 20 wooden beaters controlled by a series of cams, on a single rotating driveshaft. The player can add or subtract parts of the rhythm in order to intensify or simplify the pattern. The speed of the driveshaft is adjustable for master tempo. The combination of locked speed shaft and complex rhythms means the player can react and respond without ever going out of sync.
https://www.pelicanomecanico.com/
16. Remko Scha – Thrash
from the album Machine Guitars (1982)
Motors flicking pieces of rope against guitar strings, presented as performance-installations in the mid-late 1970s. Cited as an influence by New York no wave artists including Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth.
17. Rob Gawthrop – FREQUENCY (sound installation)
Algomech Festival DINA Sheffield 19th May 2019
“Frequency is a sound installation of two constructed single-string electric guitars with electric motors that tension and de-tension the strings very slowly. They are played with motorised spinning plectrums. Speakers to be positioned on opposite sides of the space. The ‘instruments’ at the front of the space. The work has a 19 minutes cycle. An installation of slowly shifting drone of harmonics, dissonance and beatings.”
http://www.robgawthrop.co.uk/
18. LORDxGONZO – RANDOM NOISE DRUMMING #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=UalMOpWXtsU
Youtube video, uploaded 6th April 2020
A motorised hi-hat pedal loosely holds several drumsticks, hitting parts of a standard rock drum kit, sometimes shifting position to hit different drums. The player occasionally intervenes to move the sticks or add a cymbal to the surface of one of the toms. The overall effect is somewhere between a relentless mechanical rhythm and randomly shifting patterns – this could be a free jazz drummer’s intense solo set.
19. the VAPE – ETUDE 762220051
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMgOeXGqHGg
youtube video, uploaded 30th April 2020
Petr Válek creates haphazard mechanical sculptures to make noisy, rhythmical music. A prolific videomaker, posting several times per week, reveling in the absurdity of his creations with titles like HOMEMADE NOISE TUTORIAL EPISODE 20064 – his narration to the episode so overamplified as to become a layer of noise in itself.
ETUDE 762220051 features a contraption made of a motor, sticks and cans which flops and clatters around a metal plate on a wooden table. The relentless rotation creates harsh rhythms and an interplay of timbres. The short clip ends with the noisy buzz of the motor continuing to rotate after the assemblage has dropped to the tiled floor. All that remains is the noise of the machine itself.
Graham Dunning 