Effigy

I was part of a show entitled 'After the Dust Settled' a couple of weeks back. I was allowed to install in a completely unheated huge attic space, and Effigy was born. The beast itself is about ten metres long and two metres wide, and the strands holding it in place extended through the space to take up what probably amounted to 12 square metres floor space with the strands extending up to the ceiling and leaving a void underneath the piece.

It hung there in the darkness, covered in salt and smelling of bleach and damp matter, confrontational yet dormant. There is definitely something about sitting halfway between grown and built that adds that sense of other. By suggesting at constructed origin it links in with our various myths and pantheons just enough relate to it's presence as an unknown entity. Or something.

Giver

Echo

I've spent the last few weeks solidly editing sound for a submission I'm making for Basic.fm's re-use aloud, so updates have been pretty quiet. Now the main clipping and trimming of samples is done I can go make to being 'creative' with noises. The above is an experiment with accompanying myself through use of an echo effect. The advantage of this is that unlike a looper, it fades out over time, meaning I can concentrate purely on exploring my voice rather than operating controls of any equipment. The disadvantage is that it can be somewhat rough and I'm unsure if the echos are organic enough. Here it is anyway - expect more updates soon as I fine tune it (hopefully).

Atmospheric voices

One of the other voice related things I've been up to recently is this:


This is an as yet unnamed 'sketch' for a track I'm putting on a tape with Joss Humberstone. It was done pretty much 'live' using Circular Lab's Mobius Looper and now I've got the idea of what I want I'm going back to tidy it up somewhat in the next week or so. Watch this space.

I'm also going to make a big lumpen thing tomorrow. Photos will be forthcoming.

11 days

I better make my first post about something productive I've been doing. So here it is.

11days by Within The Dolmen

I've been down in Manchester for the last couple of weeks. The original plan was to do a bit of recording, then wire up the remains of an old electric organ I'd taken apart into some kind of droning monstrosity. Unfortunately, I brought the requisite 6 tonnes of parts and then forgot two very crucial sets of wires, leaving me with just my voice and laptop with which to do any appreciable sound work. This was actually an incredibly interesting opportunity to see what sounds I was able to make, and the above was the one of the results of the exploration.

For twenty minutes each day I've been recording my vocal explorations in a meditative fashion, layering each days recording over the previous as I listen to it (I'd added in reverb when I started and all sound was played back via headphones). This has made a fairly cacophonous wall of voices that I'm not entirely sure is successful as a track, but as an experiment was invaluable. I plan to do more stuff like this, perhaps adding in rules or conditions to control the output.

Any (constructive) feedback is greatly appreciated.