|
degrees
- PhD
in Composition, 2010
- University
of Aberdeen, Scotland
- Masters
of Music in Performance (Music Composition)
May 2001 Southwest Texas State University
- Bachelors
of Music in Performance (Music Composition)
December 1998 Southwest Texas State University
awards
- 2010
Aberdeen Visual Arts Award
- 2009
PRS for New Music Three Festival Commission
- 2008
CPD Research Grant, Scottish Arts Council
- 2008
STEIM Residency
- 2007
GAVAA (Grays Aberdeen Visual Arts Award)
- 2006
PRS ATOM Award for New Music0
- 2006
Research Grant, Dept. of Research and Commercialization,
UoA
2006 US Speaking Tour Funded by Department of Music,
UoA 1
- 2004
Full Scholarship for PhD, University of Aberdeen
reviews
photo
by James Wyness
Resonant
Frequencies Weekend, Sound Festival
by
James Wyness
I’m back in the Borders tapping
away at the keyboard, having just been to Aberdeen for
a few days, an experience that I find unsettling and comforting
in equal measure. Because I was born and raised there
(against my will of course and probably as a result of
some residual bad karma – why would anyone choose to come
from a cold grey fishing town on the North East Coast
of Scotland?), I can say whatever I like about the place.
I can’t be sure but I have a feeling that this is a common
law right shared across all races, creeds and colours:
whilst remaining reasonably respectful about the birthplace
of others you can say what you like about your own. This
can, however, lead to internecine strife; my father, an
ex-Lord Provost, will tolerate no criticism of the ‘Deen.
We frequently ‘enjoy’ a full and frank exchange of views.
Yes, Aberdeen has its faults. When
I was a lad, it was a dour, dull, grey fishing town –
then the oil came. Now its filled with the wrong type
of people on the wrong sort of income. Redeeming features:
the hinterland, the University music department, in particular
Pete Stollery, one of the finest individuals (and composers)
that you’re likely to meet, the light (north of Stonehaven
you enter the Nordic climatic zone), and last but not
least the SOUND
festival where this year they had the good sense to
let Bill Thompson curate and host three days of experimental
music concerts. I want over the next few days to review
three of these events.
Here’s what I know of the two artists.
Bill Thompson, originally of Austin, Texas, is a close
personal friend, a musical colleague and one of the most
affable and charismatic musicians I know. He works very
hard and covers all the angles. I’ve worked with him many
times over the last few years and have been privileged
to have intimate insights into his work, to understand
the details of his ongoing practice, his commitment to
what might be called the avant-garde, to free improvisation
and to finding his niche and setting out his stall in
the increasingly populated free improvisation village.
Prior to meeting Burkhard Beins
and working closely with him and the other musicians I
only knew what I had read online. Now resident in Berlin,
he has a solid reputation and his CV tells us that as
a ‘composer/performer, working in the non-academic fields
of experimental music, he is known for his widely abstracted
use of percussion instruments in combination with selected
objects’
The venue, the Suttie Centre at
Aberdeen’s Foresterhill Hospital, is ‘an award winning
building’, though I doubt if the awards were handed out
for acoustic design. The foyer is one of the noisiest
I’ve ever experienced – the air conditioning experience
was like having your head inside a washing machine. You
must have to put in tons of effort and engineering skill
to achieve this amount of noise. I’d have expected that
a medical school would look into the issues surrounding
acoustic design and health, but I am noted for naivety
in my expectations. I’ll point the reader to the work
of Australian sound artist and acoustic designer Ros Bandt
for an example of what can be done. To be fair, the lecture
hall/amphitheatre is painted a relaxing green, reminding
me of the Pompidou Centre in Paris where I got thrown
out for eating a sandwich in 1977.
Beins_Thompson
As you can see from the (small)
image above, the two performers had their instruments
set out on two adjacent tables. This was mightily appropriate.
Here, in the bowels of a famously historical Scottish
Medical School, were two contemporary anatomists hovering
over their dissecting tables, preparing to cut into and
reveal the sonic guts of their subject with a performative
flourish.
I noticed that Thompson hasn’t
shed his laptop, but he usually has such a bewildering
array of hacked toys and other gaffered tape modules that
he’s perhaps become overwhelmed by matter. I noticed something
resembling a vibrator – must have a word about that….
Beins’ operating table had, amongst other objects, two
of those those clicking gas fire igniters, small oscillators,
ebows, a small zither, percussion instruments and percussive
objects, the insides of music boxes.
The audience consisted of a small
crowd of aficionados (this is Aberdeen after all). I recognised
professors, composers, students, artists. The sound reinforcement,
a nice Mackie desk and two Genelec monitors the size of
your fridge freezer, was handled by Aled Edwards who would
be my first choice technician any day of the week, and
of whom more later.
Beins’ first set began with hand
initiated iterations to the left and to the right, a deliberately
chosen gestural flourish, I felt, to let us know that
a performance is under way. Then the panning was repeated
by playing into and across the microphones. The spaces
and silences were deliberate, Beins’ comfortable body
language reinforced a sense of mastery, and the work was
utterly engaging from the start. The music built to a
complex texture of iterations and pulses, all emerging
from a sparse palette. I particularly enjoyed the clever
use of purely acoustic sources. Loops came to the fore,
never ostentatiously periodic. Textures were allowed to
run, there was never any haste to effect rapid changes.
The material therefore established itself in the ear and
in the mind of the listener. I heard very little tonal
material, save one subtly presented slightly downward
glissando. In summary, the performance came over as as
a very beautiful individual and highly musical statement,
very tightly controlled in all departments.
Thompson
Following a short break we had
a performance by Bill Thompson in the foyer.
Thompson sat with his purple Fender
Stratocaster, a bold move in my opinion, given the baggage
that goes with the mother of all axes (was it a Texan
who married his beloved strat?). Ebow at the ready, he
had the guitar going through a ‘Geiger Counter’ effects
module into a practice amp. Everyone sat down like an
audience should, though I’d have preferred it if people
had walked around and navigated the space a little more.
A series of pulses and clicks slowly
came to the fore, at times reaching the frequency of pitch
– the guitar as guitar was just recognisable at times.
Ejaculative spurts led to a more continuous tonal texture
– that delicious fuzzy narcotic, hairdresser’s-shaver-against-the-skull
multi-harmonic sound, a sound which seems to follow Thompson
everywhere he goes. I first heard him doing this at Leeds
Metropolitan University where he filled a room with a
living pulsing beating organism. At any time the whole
texture threatened to break into feedback. I could hear
Hendrix in there somewhere, as you’d expect with three
single coil pickups plus electricity. At times a long
Shepard tone seemed to move through the space, relaxing
yet holding one’s attention as the accompaniment of the
beating became perceptible.
My only comment is that I think
an opportunity was missed to engage more with the space.
I’d have liked to have heard some of the amplified sound
bouncing off that fine interior smoothcast concrete wall.
But Thompson is a consummate and confident performer,
a fine showman. His performance made me think of another
Austinite, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a guitarist’s guitarist
who pushed the boundaries in his own playing, crafting
a blues style of the finest calibre. He was also fond
of jumping up and down on his whammy bar and doing that
Texan gunslinger thang with his guitar strap, ending up
playing it behind his back. What would he have thought?
Southern Gentleman that he was, I imagine he’d have doffed
his cap, smiled that toothy cocaine smile and said something
with an ‘f’ word in it.
Back in the lecture theatre we
were treated to Thompson and Beins playing together, thus
offering us in total an overview of the two essential
kinds of improvisation – solo, where you improvise with
the material to hand, and improvisation with another where
you do the first but have to take the other guy into account.
The second of these brings into play several restrictions;
despite Derek Bailey’s assertion that there are no rules,
I think that some measure of respect is essential, though
that needn’t necessarily imply spinelessness.
This was a first class set. A complex
texture emerged slowly from a solitary sine wave, problematic
for the man on the desk trying to eliminate unwanted feedback.
I was very quickly itching for more of a walk in/chill-out
space for this item. The sit down and watch model is too
20th/19th/18th century.
Here I should say more about the
sound reinforcement. Initially I thought that the speakers
were too far apart for a stereo spread. I’ve used these
large Genelecs in the studio and they present you with
an organic ‘thing’ that moves in, between and around the
frontal panorama, exceeding any notion of simple ’stereo’.
But here Aled Edwards had achieved the remarkable effect
of making the music appear to emanate, amplified, from
the actual original source of the sounds, that is, from
the instruments themselves, for example when Beins rolled
steel ball bearings around the inside of a Zen bowl. It
was as if the large speakers were transparent. The panning
gestures of Beins and the textural drift across the two
players seemed to be localised or fixed on the actual
sources. And I thought I knew it all. A fine piece of
live sound reinforcement indeed.
Returning to the music, at slow/no
tempo one player would urge the other to intensify a movement,
to increase the friction of a passage. At times the resulting
music became characterised by ground with very little
figure. I enjoyed the pace of the entries, the pace of
change. I even managed to construct a sci-fi space narrative
at one point (me and my narratives).
What I really liked about this
music is that it never lapsed into featureless dronality.
Towards the end a sense of tension and anticipation built
up – the feeling of intention became palpable, holding
the energy but distilling methodically into a very restrained
and subtle form, a pleasant change from the predictable
‘quiet/mayhem/quiet’ arch form that less adept players
might adopt.
Some final reflections, somewhat
random and perhaps academic. I began to entertain a comparison
with two jazzers trading over a standard, having had little
time to work up their set. Musicians in this field often
choose not to work up a set in advance of a performance
in order to avoid predictablity, and besides, they have
the skills and ‘chops’ in abundance. I’d be interested
to know more about what these chops might be – a fertile
field for investigation at a later date.
So, exhilaration and inspiration,
then it all fell apart. Aberdeen had the last word, letting
us know that experimental music is barely tolerated. The
woman responsible for the building, this representative
of the City of Aberdeen to these fine international musicians,
made an announcement at 2155 hours that we were to have
everything and everyone out of the building by 2200 hours
or she would ‘get it in the neck’ (a prospect that became
increasingly attractive by around 2020 hours). This spiteful
individual will have been hiding behind a door, stopwatch
in hand, bitterly frustrated at missing out on late night
shopping (along with the rest of her ilk), or possibly
at missing a thrilling installment of Holby City with
a box of Quality Street to hand. Five minutes to clear
all the cables, speakers, musician’s gear, etc, etc. Of
course this mean spirited ‘wifie’ knew perfectly well
that what she was demanding was impossible – she just
wanted to make us all feel bad, to attract attention and
to let us know who was in charge. Aberdeen is a haven
for these types, from school janitors to employees at
the train station. They all attend the same training school
where they do the advanced course in contempt for the
general public. The finest graduate of this training establishment
was the bloke who stopped Alvin Lee (yes, the the very
same lightning riffer from Woodstock) at His Majesty’s
Theatre sometime in the ’70s by walking up to the stage
at EXACTLY 2200 hours, just as Alvin came out of his last
solo into the final chorus, tapping him on the foot, and,
unhappy with almost having a Gibson 335 rammed down his
throat, promptly switching off the PA.
And you wonder why I headed south
at the first opportunity.
tripartite
collision/feb 23rd (2006) [released on state sanctioned
records]
SSRCD002
Bill Thompson
‘Tripartite Collision’
[State Sanctioned Recordings]
------------------------------------------------------------------
Resonance
Magazine Issue 53: Resonancemag.com
Only a handful
of current sonic pioneers-Animal Collective, Wolf Eyes,
Iannis Xenakis-really explore the possibilities of isolated
frequencies and their effect (usually an adverse one)
on listeners. On Tripartite Collision, Bill Thompson
crafts a difficult sound painting of radio buzzes, subharmonic
frequencies, digital whistling, and relentless, unmitigated
sine waves that recalls both underground noise nerds and
scientists who treat sound as a medium. However, this
album elicits less of a listening experience than a physical
reaction, with certain tones generating headaches and
eye twitches, and others inspiring euphoric new sensations
in body parts that usually have no relationship with sound.
The question could be asked: Does Thompson create music
or alien massages? Ross Simonini
Furthernoise
Bill Thompson is
a former guitarist now moving in electro-acoustic improvisation
circles, whose sound falls somewhere between Keith Rowe
and the more ambient Arcane Device. Although his early
professional career was with a number of ensembles in
Austin, Texas, he moved to Scotland in 2004 to study with
Pete Stollery. Since then, he has been active in a number
of different aspects of the Scottish experimental music
scene (check out the links from around Scotland on his
web site). He has a number of releases on various mp3
and CD-r labels, and Tripartite Collision is the second
release on a new label, State Sanctioned Records, released
in an edition of 200.
The title track sets up a deep
drone, with jerky, skittering short bursts, and a lead
voice composed from quick static movements and feedback
squalls. He adds another, harsher drone at the top, very
raw sounding. The occasional voice in the mix recalls
short waves. It eventually gives way to a rich, full drone,
with a gradual elimination of all but the smallest events
that might get in the way of a full appreciation.
The opening sound of Feb'23rd is
voices, treated until they sound almost like sea birds,
slowly evolving into a sound mass where the opening sounds
are fast moving, almost a melody. I get a lot of avian
and reptilian imagery, but a lot of serenity as well.
Heavily manipulated voices appear from nowhere, the first
sound that doesn't sound completely electronic in origin.
After a long, very quiet section in the middle, a slow
pulse, repeating about every eight seconds, becomes the
first new layer, and is soon joined by another, even slower
oscillation. The piece builds to a final high point around
after nearly a half hour, then slowly fades away. Thompson
has a video of a live performance of the piece on his
web site, which is not the same performance as the one
on the CD.
Thompson shares with Arcane Device
a way to use a raw electronic sound without having it
sound harsh. He sets a number of sounds into motion with
different rates of change, and slowly evolves the texture
over the course of the two fairly lengthy pieces. Tripartite
Collision successfully treads a middle ground between
ambience and noise and is an excellent set of analog electronic
drones.
Review
by Caleb Deuprealeb
De
Sound323
The
second release on this promising UK label features two
extended pieces by Bill Thompson, a former jazz guitarist
whose battle with tendonitis forced him to shift his focus
to sound art and minimalist composition, with interesting
results. He has spent the past ten years working in the
improvised electronic sound scene, mainly in Austin, Texas
(where he regularly performs with the GATES Ensemble)
and Aberdeen, Scotland (Mickel Mass), using everything
from prepared guitar, cd mixers, laptop, radio, DIY circuit-bent
devices, and other noise-making devices to create mesmerizing
drone epics driven by damaged electronics and lo-fi noise.
The first piece, the title track, features a subdued hypno-bass
pulse that gradually becomes enveloped in fried noise
snippets, ring-modulator sounds, glitch electronics, and
a looming cloud of electrodrone fog. The piece becomes
thick (but not dense) with overmodulated and processed
tones that interact in harmonic fashion with the bass
pulse that eventually slows to more of a dark, throbbing
drone. The second piece, "Feb'23rd," takes over
half an hour to unfold and is an evolving collage of small
audio files traded over the web with members of Edinburgh's
FOUND ensemble. The musicians traded the audio snippets,
altering them with each pass, and the final pieces were
assembled into this exotic-sounding tapestry of unidentifiable
noises, hums, and field recording snippets. The defiled
audio bits play out over a bed of droning, shimmering
harmonic feedback and hum, like a processed stream of
alien audio consciousness speeding by in clouds of soothing
drone. As with all SSR releases, this one is limited to
200 copies in understated but spiffy pressboard sleeves.
Nice,
and worth hearing.
The
One True Dead Angel:
The second
release on this promising UK label features two extended
pieces by Bill Thompson, a former jazz guitarist whose
battle with tendonitis forced him to shift his focus to
sound art and minimalist composition, with interesting
results. He has spent the past ten years working in the
improvised electronic sound scene, mainly in Austin, Texas
(where he regularly performs with the GATES Ensemble)
and Aberdeen, Scotland (Mickel Mass), using everything
from prepared guitar, cd mixers, laptop, radio, DIY circuit-bent
devices, and other noise-making devices to create mesmerizing
drone epics driven by damaged electronics and lo-fi noise.
The first piece, the title track, features a subdued hypno-bass
pulse that gradually becomes enveloped in fried noise
snippets, ring-modulator sounds, glitch electronics, and
a looming cloud of electrodrone fog. The piece becomes
thick (but not dense) with overmodulated and processed
tones that interact in harmonic fashion with the bass
pulse that eventually slows to more of a dark, throbbing
drone. The second piece, "Feb'23rd," takes over
half an hour to unfold and is an evolving collage of small
audio files traded over the web with members of Edinburgh's
FOUND ensemble. The musicians traded the audio snippets,
altering them with each pass, and the final pieces were
assembled into this exotic-sounding tapestry of unidentifiable
noises, hums, and field recording snippets. The defiled
audio bits play out over a bed of droning, shimmering
harmonic feedback and hum, like a processed stream of
alien audio consciousness speeding by in clouds of soothing
drone. As with all SSR releases, this one is limited to
200 copies in understated but spiffy pressboard sleeves.
Nice, and worth hearing.
Free
Noise:
Second
great release from home grown label belonging to Rob Hart
aka Eaten By Children. Scotland based Thompson has been
involved in 'sonic art' for ten years and has seen the
inside of the BBC, Resonance FM and various. Here two
contrasting live pieces demonstrate the slow build technique,
similar to some of Hart's work. The title track running
in at 11.52 left me wanting more even though it is almost
entirely made up of a (quality) underlying sub bass drone
and a few contemplative high and mid range fizzes. The
quality of the audio is something that is paramount here
and the material contrasts with examples in the similar
vein, which are in their plenty. I got more in the second
track but this time a longer (32.19) and even more introspective,
especially after a grand first phase of 17 minutes, leaving
it on to attend to a visit from my mother found it as
a background conducive to chat even though on the surface
slightly ominous and unsettling. Stoners will like this
(after your mother's gone!) as there's plenty of imagination
and colour after the central section; a single, wavering
drone of some six minutes where time disappears. So not
to worry you pacey types (!) as (uber-gradually) sizzly,
meditative friends join in again to the end warp-out,
leaving ( in the silence which is now anything but, as
a passing car freaks out my state) an awareness of the
live molecules in everything...
Vital:
Perhaps
I missed out on Bill Thompson somewhere along the line,
but he has had releases on Spectral House, Bremsstrahlung
and Autueach othermn Records, but yet this is my first
encounter with his work. Originally Thompson was an aspiring
jazz guitarist, but thought that composing was perhaps
of more interest. He spends his time in Austin, Texas
and Aberdeen, Scotland and in his work as an improviser
he uses prepared guitar, CD mixers, laptop, radio, found
objects and circuit-bent devices.
On this
release two pieces, but if you didn't know, it would hard
to hear, since they fade over into each other and might
as well be one single piece. The title piece was created
in 2005 as part of the See/Hear event in Inverurie in
Scotland starts out with a low end bass hum, and some
pitched crackles, but as the piece evolves more mid range
sounds come in like a swirling dervish and makes a very
fine piece of microsound. Very lush and ambient but also
quite engaging.
In the
second piece, 'Feb'23rd', Thompson composes a piece made
out of small audio files made by the musicians of the
Found Ensemble from Edinburgh. These pieces were traded
over the web, and everybody altered whatever he or she
thought was necessary.
In the
end Thompson created this piece of music, which is, as
said, quite similar to the first piece, but much longer.
Thompson stretches out the material to quite an extend,
and lets all the sound in there 'breath'. They slowly
shift back and forth, going out of sync and certainly
in the second part of the piece things turn quite microsound-ambient-glitch
(you don't need to call like that if the term shocks you)
in the best Taylor Deupree tradition.
semtex
magazine:
State Sanctioned Records
is a rather new English label focusing on unorthodox music.
Its second release is one by Bill Thompson, a Texan composer
and sound artist who migrated to Scotland. Among the instruments
used in his pieces prepared guitar, radio transmitters,
laptop, circuit-bend devices and found objects can be
traced. The two tracks on the record can be situated in
the field of electro acoustic improvisation; past collaborations
with an artist like Keith Rowe are not accidental.
Tripartite Collision,
the 11-minute opener of the album, was first premiered
at the Sea/Hear event in Scotland. It starts out with
a buzzing sub-bass tone where gradually an eclectic accumulation
of noise, rustling and ultrasonic noises are added. In
the middle of the piece the sub-bass pines away, clearing
the way to the fizz and the fuzz, to sneak back in some
minutes later and ending the piece solitary.
Feb'23rd came about by
exchanging and treating small audio-files with the Scottish
FOUND ensemble and Bill Thompson crystallized the piece
in its definite form. Lasting over half an hour it has
a slowly continuing structure of mysteriously hovering
digital fuzz, rattlesnake resembling noises and other
pit pat. Amidst Feb’23rd a ghostly harmonic tone horses
around with silence, a few moments later the piece builds
itself back up again.
Both pieces have a delicate
and mesmeric feel and float between electro-acoustic improvisation
and fine-drawn ambient. The record comes in a carefully
edited rectangular cardboard and is limited to 200 pieces.
Good stuff.
Touching
Extremes:
Excellent music from Bill
Thompson, who started as a jazz guitarist but had to give
up due to tendonitis; with all due respect, looks like
the world of minimal electroacoustic music has gained
from Thompson's loss. The two tracks presented here were
conceived according to completely different settings and
parameters. The title track is a droning minefield to
be crossed with all aerials up, but indeed nothing explodes;
it's a looming mass of subharmonics and flanged frequencies
spiced by penetrating highs that rapidly catches our attention
and, as soon as our brain adapts to its components, fades
to black in all its galvanizing malevolence. "Feb'23rd"
is a collaboration between Thompson and Edinburgh's Found
Ensemble, the parts exchanging sound files via internet
and setting their own modifications at work during the
process. Clocking in at over 32 minutes, the piece offers
more space for the ideas to evolve and achieve their self-determination.
What sounds like vocal radioactivity is gradually replaced
by protuberant discharges and hollow soulless emissions
in a sort of heavenward invocation by a malfunctioning
robot. Clouds of alluring resonances put our mind in solitary
confinement for several minutes, only to be complemented
by unhurried series of electronic waves and spiraliform
networks that recall Nurse With Wound's "Soliloquy
for Lilith". It's the most fascinating section of
an overall brilliant record.
Heathen
Harvest:
With this release, London's
"State Sanctioned Records" (Label of Rob Hart
from Noise-mongers Eaten By Children) releases its second
album. The first being Eaten By Children's very own "Sword
Swallower's Grave". Like its predecessor, this album
is also limited to just 200 copies, this one being copy
68/200.
Bill has written both
of these tracks for local exhibitions in his native Aberdeen,
and according to the label page, he produces "prepared
guitar, digital cd mixers, laptop, radio, and digital/analogue
synthesizers, as well as found objects and DIY circuit-bent
devices.". "Tripartite Collision", in its
beautiful Cellulite cover, complete with etch-a-sketch
scribbling, claims to be an Intense but Delicate journey,
and if it's anything like the SSR release before it, it
probably shouldn't be played in public. Ever.
It does in fact open with
some intricate but impressing Power Electronics, the first
few minutes of Tripartite Collision, are Pulsating loops
of Electronic Bass, pretty low in the mix, as my speakers
are on loud, and this is about half the volume it should
be. I expect to find myself peeling myself off the wall
any minute now. Actually a nice hypnotic track, and the
Stoners amongst you will have a field day. The track goes
into that bizare "Ambient Noise" territory,
towards the end, and fuck the critics, It's excellent.
The way it is done, the way the pulses and vibrations
change and compliment each other, before turning into
an Ambient nightmare is just incredible. On paper, this
kind of sound is plain and dreary, but the underlying
textures here just rewrite the way I view it. A track
I will no doubt listen to again, and again.
At shortly over half an
hour in length, "Feb'23rd" is dangerously close
to becoming a laughing number, I never advise Ambient
artists to exceed this point, unless the offering is very
rich and original in sound. This track is more Vibrant,
louder, more confident. Nothing happens as frantically,
or as quickly, but the slow build ups leave the listener
enough independence and space to reflect in their own
time. Go downstairs. Make a Coffee. Come back, induce
a trance-like state. This album won't hurt you. It will
endear, comfort, and protect you as you slip into a lucid
moment. If you want to simply listen to it, you can find
yourself painting a portrait with many colours, the sound
could be one of a million things, from an Icy morning
trying to banish the Sun, to a Construction Site underground,
boring into your skull.
It is with much pride
and happiness, that after listening to this album, I have
gone from expecting an interesting and chaotic mixture
of Noise, to actually hearing and bookmarking this track
as one of the best new artists of 2006. Not just that,
but based on the strength of this, I urge every single
reader of HH to visit the State Sanctioned website. This
won't ever go down as an album to inspire artists, but
for the second release of a brand new, independant, and
obscure label, this will lift the veil right off the head,
and quite possibly propel SSR into a much bigger, much
more extreme world. They sure as hell deserve it. As does
Bill Thompson.
The best thing to come
out of Scotland since William Wallace? Or even Border
Biscuits? You Decide. I know my answer.
of
memory and dreams (2006) [released on Seven Things]
------------------------------------------------------------------
Touching
Extremes:
BILL THOMPSON - “…of memory
and dreams” (7hings)
Scarce advertising kills
excellent music. That's why I don't excessively love downloadable
releases, besides living in a commodity deprived area
(no broadband internet). If the kind soul that belongs
to “the artist also known as Professor LoFi” hadn't suggested
him to send me this on a CDR, I'd have probably missed
a great recording. Because this is great, no questions
about it. Lasting just over half an hour, “...of memory
and dreams” was commissioned by, and realized for, 7hings
in the occasion of the 2007's Huddersfield's Contemporary
Music Festival. As the author himself writes, this performance
“blurs the boundaries between composition, improvisation
and indeterminacy”. Yet, somehow it appears like a preconceived
score, each element masterfully placed in a chain of happenings
whose common denominator is something that could only
be described as “vital flow”. With a few deviations, even
less discharges and a mumbling-if-buzzing flux that affirms
its gripping beauty in the transcendental final section
of the piece, Thompson shows new alternatives to post
Keith Rowe-ism, defining the limits of drone-based soundscaping
with a pronounced tendency to implosion, withdrawing himself
in the closet of the untold while caressing our neural
apparatus with some of the most fascinating sounds that
a man can muster for a solo exhibition. And he also managed
to fit a few welcome birdsongs in there. Scintillating,
bright-minded, helplessly questioning sound analysis functioning
as therapy against the mental intumescences that daily
stupidity systematically generates. After the remarkable
“Tripartite Collision” on State Sanctioned, this outing
confirms that this gentleman is for real, as one looks
forward to discover what's boiling in his future's pot.
Furthernoise
of memory and dreams
There is a trajectory that many
improvised electro acoustic performances reach, which
unique in every given context, often manage to transport
you to a Zen like point where you become one with the
signal and phase in and out of listening to the development
of structure or dynamic of the work. This is not a comment
on the given quality of a piece, rather it's ability to
loll you into the necessary transcendental state in which
to appreciate it. This is no more so than in Bill Thompsons
recent work Of Memory and Dreams where tertiary structural
form meet processed drones in a 32 minute piece, which
is every bit as sonically suggestive as it's title.
Of the three key elements of processed
signals, field recordings and frequency manipulation,
it is the collaging of more distinct found field sound
that gives this recording a certain audio visual quality.
It places you within the mix, rather than on it's periphery
and with excellent stereo imaging, it's hard not to let
your senses travel along on this topographical soundscape.
Having said that it is not always an easy listen but as
a trait Thompson has always left that to others, preferring
to reward the challenge with a sense of listener accomplishment.
You really do have to put the time aside to listen to
this and as a single track, it is difficult to pause and
come back if you want the experience of the full journey.
No stranger to the pages of Furthernoise,
Bill has been composing and performing as a sound artist
for over ten years and Of Memory and Dreams demonstrates
him honing his sound to completeness. While certain northern
European noise influences are perceptible, Bill Thompson
retains an indisputable originality in his sound that
will enthuse many interested in this genre.
Review by Roger Mills
The
One True Dead Angel:
of memory and
dreams
Enigmatic sound-sculptor Bill Thompson
brings on the drone (and some eccentric noises) in this
lengthy single track available by download only from UK
label Seven Things. Approximately thirty minutes in length,
the piece was commissioned by the label for their set
in the 2007 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival,
and features Thompson live using a combination of found
objects, field recordings, electronic gadgets (including
several electronic toothbrushes generously donated by
AMM guitarist Keith Rowe just before playing; I defy anyone
to tell me where they actually appear in the piece), a
laptop, bent circuitry, and other enigmatic resources.
The result is an ever-developing stretch of drone, cyclonic
noise, and jumbled sounds, the audio equivalent of a swarm
of tornadoes appearing far on the horizon and approaching
steadily, inexorably, leaving a trail of chaos and dissolution
in their wake. There's a heavy drone quotient courtesy
of a high-pitching cycling drone that never really disappears
(although it does recede into the background at times
and is occasionally drowned out by other noises), and
at times is the most prominent sound source, but there
are also cryptic noises and sound textures. The tail end
of the piece, in fact, is almost all drone with intermittent
noises for sonic flavoring, and that drone is a good one.
This is not a "heavy" noise piece -- it gets
loud at times, yes, but it's less about audio terrorism
than it is about exploring different sound textures within
the confines of a deep drone -- but it's definitely engaging,
despite the length. It's fitting that some of the materials
came from Keith Rowe, because this is comparable in style
and texture to some of the more freeform work of AMM.
Excellent work, and certainly worth the minimal cost of
the download. (The site also makes available a free sample
and an interview with Thompson, which are worth checking
out for those who may still be undecided.)
GAZ-ETA
of memory and dreams
I haven't got a clue what composer/sound-artist
Bill Thompson uses to produce the sound given off on "...Of
Memory and Dreams". Could it be a broken CD that
is fed through a laptop or perhaps prepared guitar that
is amplified and processed through his home-made software?
No matter, the half hour work begins with an elongated,
high-pitched sound. This is one of these extreme high-pitches
that makes the listeners grab their ears for relief, especially
after more than ten minutes have gone by. All the while,
that sound still persists. Past the ten minute mark, the
pitch alters slightly. Then, the sound gets somewhat fatter.
At the twenty minute point, the sound becomes more subdued.
It then takes a gentle tumble downwards in intensity,
while maintaining more or less the same speed. Certainly
a very challenging listening session but one that pays
off dividends during repeated listening sessions.
- Tom Sekowski
august/september:
with brent fariss (2006) [released on spectral house]
"BRENT
FARISS & BILL THOMPSON - AUGUST/SEPTEMBER (CD by Spectral
House)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaz-Eta:
Working with
new music ensembles such as ThomFariCraw, Austin New Music
Co-op, Araxia Trio, and Gates Ensemble, American composer
Brent Fariss has now joined forces with sound artist/composer
Bill Thompson to produce a massive homage to the softer
side of the drone. Made up of two elongated pieces [each
one named after a summer month], the duo moves in creaky
and mysterious ways to give us one of the more satisfying
records of this year already. Polarizing the gritty elements
with the more hushed ones, the pieces move between the
tranquil to the more disturbing, head-shaking turns. Heavy
electronic element is present throughout but what's more
pleasing is the pacing these two adhere to. Neither rushed,
nor done in a turtle's pace; their communal sound is that
of mid tempo. Field recordings are used heavily as well.
"August" features a thick plethora of crickets
playing an off-tune melody. As the chorus grows weaker,
it turns in on itself into a machine-like sound that permeates
most of the remainder of the piece. Not unlike "August",
"September" follows through with sounds of horse
hoofs hitting the ground, amplified insect sounds and
a bunch of animal sounds that I can't quite pinpoint.
Over time, very slowly, metallic buzzing emerges out of
nowhere. These fly around the stereo speakers from left
to right and back again. Rougher, cricket-like sounds
pop out. They are then accompanied by soft-footsteps-in-the-snow
sounds. Both pieces are finished before you can fully
immerse yourself in their glow. Time plays a secondary
role as the mind is fooled by so many elements happening
within each piece all at once. Elements of white noise,
prepared guitars, laptops, synths and knob tweakings are
evident. All of these are pure sounds of finding your
own way through field of experimental sound. Bravo!
- Tom Sekowski
Vital:
This is my first
encounter with both Spectral House as well as Brent Fariss
and Bill Thompson. The first plays 'prepared contrabass,
electronics, field recordings' and Thompson plays 'electronics,
amplified percussion and field recordings'. Both studied
composition at Texas State University in the mid 90s,
and they cross lines of modern composition, electronics,
noise and free improvisation. As far as i understand both
pieces on this release were commissioned by an arts organization
to be played live but the result were thus nice that they
decided to go into the studied to do a full, good studio
recording of it. Rightly so, because this is music that
deserves to be heard. In 'August' things start at the
long drone end, with a wall of electronics, but gradually
over the course of this piece, things move towards letting
the instruments be heard as such and even ends with a
desolate bowed string. The second piece, 'September' works
along less well defined lines, and is more an open ended
collage form piece of music, moving through various textures,
both electronically and acoustically. Both pieces are
great works from the world where composing and improvising
meet up. No doubt we'll be hearing more from them. (FdW)
Address: http://www.spectralhouse.com"
untitled
(mcalpine) (2005) [released and available for download
on bremsstrahlung records]
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Chance
favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
"This
work of stunning beauty presents itself more like a masterwork
of compositional restraint and focused exploration of
timbre than the enhanced field recording it is. Thompson's
prepared mind allowed him to capture one of the most moving
pieces of sound you are likely to experience this year.
It must be heard to be believed…"
Kenji
Siratori
"Bill
Thompson exterminates hunting for the grotesque WEB of
a
chemical anthropoid brain universe of the terror fear
cytoplasm that
jointed to the insanity medium of the hyperreal HIV scanners
gene-dub of the corpse city." - Kenji Siratori,
author of Blood Electric
liminal
passage
"...These fascinating
pieces from the early Spanish school were followed by
the first of the evening's’electroacoustic works, Bill
Thompson’s Liminal Passage. In this piece and later too
in Claire Singer’s a’fàs soilleir I was reminded
of some of Ligeti’s compositions where rhythm and melody
have largely been purged from music in order for the attention
to be concentrated instead on constantly evolving shades
of harmonic colour. It has to be said of course that this
is solely my personal reaction to the music and it is
possible that Ligeti’s music was the last thing on the
minds of either composer. Interestingly enough, in Bill
Thompson’s piece in particular, rhythm had not really
been abolished at all. The clashing of different sound
wave patterns created a throbbing of rhythm that ran all
through this music. The dimming of the lights in the Chapel
for this performance concentrated the mind on the sounds
alone and this was entirely beneficial for this piece."
University of Aberdeen Music Review 2006
resonare/in
absentia
"... Composer Bill
Thompson directed us to the display of Greek pottery in
a glass case in that section of the Marischal College
Museum, which is on the right hand side on approach to
the Picture Gallery. Thompson had been permitted to place
microphones against or inside the exhibits to record the
ambient sounds coming from the jars at a very high level
of recording. The composer's input to these sounds seemed
to have been comparatively minimal. This in itself was
interesting, since it raised the question of how much
alteration had been applied to the generic sound sources
by the other six composer/performers whose work we heard
on Thursday." University of Aberdeen Music Review
2005
------------------------------------------------------------------
(with)
gates
The Gates
Ensemble is an electro-acoustic ensemble formed in September
2001 to realize the piece Gates, for which the ensemble
was eventually named. The piece involved free improvisation
within the context of strict entrance and exit times.
Since its inception, Gates has had a somewhat fluid membership.
As of the time of this recording, Gates consisted of Brent
Fariss, Jacob Green, Holland Hopson, Bill Thompson, Josh
Ronsen, and Travis Weller. Past members have included
David Drew, Afshar Kharat, Clark Crawford, and others.
"...fluent and imaginative,
sustained electronic drones and whines weaving among dramatic
instrumental clusters." - The Wire
"...these six improvisers
are great musicians who are able to produce some cohesive
music in their explorations of pure sound." - Vital
Weekly
------------------------------------------------------------------
(with)
Mickel Mass
"Finally we turn
to Lost Conversations, a far more experimental, free-form
collection that features the talents of Mike Napier, Andy
Da Kipp, Duncan Hart, Bill Thompson, and Alan Davidson,
who together have created some wonderfully abstract soundscapes,
full of raindrop melodies and creaking electronics. Half-fool
Optimist demonstrates this blend of acoustic and electronics
perfectly, the piece slowly turning to chaos and disorder
before Lost Conversation repeats the trick, the softly
picked guitar and soothing cello being slowly engulfed
by a swarm of electronic insects. On For Lol (A Doffing
Of The Cap), I presume that would be Lol Coxhill, the
formula is reversed as some free-jazz noise is slowly
lightened by a drifting cloud of echoed piano. The best,
however, is saved until last with a 40 minute live improvisation
recorded at The Tunnels (Aberdeen), which shows the band
in fine form, with chattering electronics and acoustic
melodies being infused into a cello led drone, that breaks
down into free noise, before the band get seriously psychedelic
with some deep-space explorations that have a west-coast
feel to them. Finally the stutter of the electronics take
over again as the piece disintegrates with a flurry of
white noise and feedback sounding like a long-lost kraut
rock classic." (Simon Lewis)
------------------------------------------------------------------
(with)
Brekekekexkoaxkoax
BREKEKEKEXKOAXKOAX - We used to
be such good friends (Hushroom)
Touching
Extremes:
This impossibly named collective
- founded in 1996 - recognizes its leader in Josh Ronsen,
a Texas-based sound and mail artist who also happens to
be an active force in the outflow of unadulterated music
and writing (he publishes an online webzine, Monk Mink
Pink Punk, and an email newsletter, Austinnitus). The
record contains about 73 minutes of music divided in four
tracks. "Haifa Hi-Fi" features Ronsen on electric
guitar and clarinet, Jacob Green on oboe, organ, "misc
instr" and electronics, Glen Nuckolls on acoustic
guitar, banjo and violin and Genevieve Walsh on flute
and snare drum. It's pure improvisation, that which many
are convinced to be playing but don't even get close:
approximate shapes, detuned strings and unpretentious
approaches to a collective imagination that lasts the
space of a moment allow the music to fluctuate in search
of a definition that never materializes. The four parties
look for critical tresholds and hidden places, from which
they seem to observe their reciprocal self-response to
the complete lack of a so-called "style". Moments
exist when the creature tries to spread the wings and
learn to fly without success, due to an undescribable
frailty that is also the true, essential beauty of the
piece. "Figure or failure II" is a short solo
work for turntable, voice, electronics and computer -
all by Ronsen - boiling with discreet electronic possibilities
and subterranean interferences under a fixed droning hum
that stabilizes the matter in an engrossing self-replicating
cycle, unfortunately ending too soon. "Tuesday on
Sunday" is a quartet of electronics, oboe/organ,
electric guitar and computer (respectively by Vanessa
Arn, Green, Ronsen and Bill Thompson). Uncertain guitar
arpeggios nourish a growingly tense layering of acute
dissonant frequencies that generate a distressing sense
of unexpected and untold; the repetition of selected patterns
renders the music a little more permanent in memory, but
the feeling remains one of decay and forgetfulness, reinforced
by a pretty murky equalization, until the whole fuses
into a final ejaculation of stridency. "For I.D.
II" is a solo for bowed bass guitar that closes the
show with the most frictional music of the whole CD, a
roaring upheaval of granular harmonics and harsh resonances
accompanying a bad trip through minimal hopelessness.
Outer
Space Gamelan
"...the four players
take the time to actually pay attention to what the other
is playing and meditate on it good n' long until they
decide to sneak in with their own contribution..."
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