New project

I've begun making some freeform drone and or ambient sounds with Jake Bielby. Above is the first recording.

Cold Land Records

Here is a compilation of sounds (with a Dolmen Dweller track nestled in there as well). Go have a listen/download/purchase and support interesting noises. 

Drone Tubes

I've been making some noises with bits of metal tubing recently. Sounds quite satisfyingly like a didgeridoo at longer, but with a faint metallic twang. Shorter lengths yield an eerie drone that works well over the top. Three tracks making use of looping, delays and reverbs in varying amounts.

These may well develop into some form of automatic horn installation, if not some recorded sonic output in their own right.


Drone Tubes by Within The Dolmen

Motors and Drone

I've been playing with using electric motors to generate tones. Here are the results of the first experiment. I've run a low pass filter on the signal from the motor to smooth the tone out a bit then multitracked it. Five recordings layered over each other. The end result of this should yield some form of sculptural installation/group performance piece...

My First Oscillator

I put together an oscillator today. It makes some fairly harsh droney sounds - which is always satisfying. The circuit will form the basis of some kind of group instrument/installation in the near future...

It sounds like this:

Phill Niblock

Lord of drones...

Listen to the whole playlist. Loud.

Mandible

A few tweaks, and I was able to get a good signal out of the jawbone mic, and get something recorded. Unfortunately, my effects unit isn't keen on non balanced signal it seems, so buzzed a bit (removed in most of the track below). Will tweak things and bit and try and find a decent housing for the thing. The slightly distorted signals added all kinds of worthwhile extraneous noise once overlayed. Definitely worth further investigation.

UnTongues

I did a little performance on Saturday in Hoult's Yard...

For some reason I can't upload it, so here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLqQI59kl4&feature=youtu.be

A Profound Encounter

I recently had a sound piece in Basic.fm and The Newbridge Project's 'reuse aloud' broadcast. Here's what I said about it:

“Perception of the profound experience has changed over time. What could at one point have been described as angelic visitation, at another time is attributed to different sources. Using altered audio from calls made to the Nuforc UFO hotline, I aim to capture a profound experience that is beyond context, shedding light on the happening itself, rather than its cause.”



Now it's been broadcast, I've put it up on a bandcamp page for free download if you're so inclined. Full info on the Reuse Aloud project available here: www.basic.fm?page_id=2516

Colony

I've had a show up in Empty Shop in Durham for a little while. I colonised the space with amorphous forms that emitted sonorous bell like tones, that became quite oppressive after enough time. The forms communicated with each other without care or concern for the viewer and illicited some really interesting reactions and comments from visitors ranging from suspicion that that sounds where triggered by people to links to social relationships in archeology. Images in the 3D section of the site and an excerpt of the sound can be heard here:

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.