Around the Bend: Circuit Bending Talk, Oct 25th
Delivering a talk about circuit bending, live electronics and composition as part of the sound festival of Aberdeen. My talk is at 3:45 pm Saturday the 25th at the McRoberts Building, University of Aberdeen, but there are also numerous other workshops and talks that day starting at 10am. The event is free and open to the public. More info here.
The Burning Harpsichord Series #6, Oct 26th
The BH Series returns again as part of the sound festival here in Aberdeen at its new regular time and place! The last Sunday of each month, starting roughly at 7pm, we will feature local and traveling experimental artists. Cost is a donation of £3 to £5 with no one turned away for lack of funds.
The location is Aberdeen’s newest venue, The Music Club, at 52-54 Langstane Place, Aberdeen, AB11 6EN
For this event which is part of the sound festival occurring throughout October and November we are featuring Manchester based artist Rodrigo Constanzo, Jedburgh sound artist James Wyness, and myself for three intimate live electronics sets, followed by a group improvisation to finish the night.
About the Artists:
Rodrigo Constanzo was born in Madrid, Spain. He began playing piano at the age of four. Though he is classically trained, his primary interest lies in contemporary music. For the past ten years he has occupied himself by creating a number of instruments made from modifying electronic devices, in a process called circuit-bending. As a composer he is heavily influenced by visual art, and tries to make each composition self-standing–each idea being a unique one, and demanding a unique outcome. The one thing that ties most of his work together is the surrendering of part of his control as a composer, be it in aleatoric or arbitrary decisions at the composition level, or through largely improvised forms at the performance level. For more info: http://www.rodrigoconstanzo.com/
James Wyness lives in Jedburgh but is active as an artist across the UK with works performed overseas in both directions. His main focus compositionally has been with with acousmatic listening and the unfolding of the sound object, with the integration of mimetic and more obviously musical material and with the emergence of narrative. As a sound artist he mostly explores the phonographic forms which deal with documentary and archive, and which broadly address the disciplines of anthropology and ethnography through the medium of sound. For more info: http://www.wyness.org
The Burning Harpsichord Series: Ressurection, Sept 28th
The BH Series is back with a new regular time and place! The last Sunday of each month, starting roughly at 7pm, we will feature local and traveling experimental artists. Cost is a donation of £3 to £5 with no one turned away for lack of funds.
The location is Aberdeen’s newest venue, The Music Club, at 52-54 Langstane Place, Aberdeen, AB11 6EN
This Sunday featured myself using some new instruments built at STEIM and the use of live video from the The Brakanator, as well as artists SumiSumi vs Noma, The Matricarians, and video artist John Reed.
The Matricarians (plus) is a relatively new supergroup taking members for the Kitchen Cynics, Mickel Mass, and a few other local experimentors mixed in for an avant-garde swirl of experimental psychedelia.
SUMISUMI V NOMA, is a project combining the efforts of Andy Da Kipp (solo artist, member of Mickel Mass, DJ) and NOMA (well known experimental improviser and drone artist active in Glasgow) Both artists have performed in Aberdeen, either solo or in groups as part of The Burning Harpsichord Series at the Lemon Tree or at various events at Peacock Visual Arts, The Tunnels, Drakes and elsewhere. The combined efforts of these two gentlemen made the evening worth coming out for in and of itself.
Stay tuned for audio and video from the night and Join us next month, October 26th for the next installment featuring a full set from myself, phonographer, composer, sound artist James Wyness, and circuit bender and sound artist Rodrigo Constanzo. Email for more info HERE.
Developing New Guerilla Street Performance, Aug 8th
08/08 Wrote article for Cultural Enterprise Office: Swimming in Different Waters
Circuit Bending Workshop Aug 02-03
Giving a beginning circuit bending workshop at Peacock Visual Arts, August 2nd and 3rd. Pix and vids HERE.
Review “…of memory and dreams” on GAZ-ETA July 17th
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…[more]
New Review on Touching Extremes, July 4th
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”. [more]
STEIM IN NEED OF SUPPORT! May 26th
STEIM’s support is being threatened…read this and write an email to help keep this great institution open!
From Steim: Things are not well at STEIM. We are in the danger of losing our structural funding from the government, based on a review from the advisor board which called us “closed and only appealing to a niche audience”. The outlook isn’t exactly bleak, but at the moment our future is unclear. In the meantime we’ve submitted our response to the Council for Culture, accompanied by the more than 900 support letters and emails.
Many thanks to all of you who responded! If you’d still like to show your support, you can do so here.
Wrote Community Report, NE Scotland, Electroacoustic Music Scene, May 2008
GAVAA Project, Brakanator, May 26th
Reviews Furthernoise & One True Dead Angel, May 1st
The Fog gets a Blog! April 27th
Dedicated to exploring the hazy realms of experimental music, this 2 hour weekly program focuses on sound art and experimental music from the past, present, and near future. Interviews, live studio sessions, underground detritus, found recordings, live electronics, field recordings, and even an occasional blues track will find themselves blurred together by prof_lofi into a mixed bag of the bizarre.
Sundays 10pm to Midnight. SHMUFM: http://www.shmu.org.uk/shmufm.m3u
or in Aberdeen on 99.8 FM
Nexus Argyll March 2008