Beginnings

Here are 3 vidoes I made for the Blackout stage at Ashton Court of which I was a team member as most crew were drawn from the Cube Cinema and its wider family of friends and associates. I recommend listening with headphones, quite loud, just because you need the pressure to get the signals up to the level used in live gigs. The first one says Vi 2 Tracks. This only shows one though. The second track is too long to upload at the moment. I found all footage online. It shows an amazing robotic chair artwork, sorry but I dont know who made it. The second robot is an early Honda creation called Asimo. The last thing is by Boston Dynamics. Again, quite early. If you search for what they are doing now its terrifying. The other clips are made by obviously pointing a camera at an oscillascope screen.

I came to really regard the mixing board as my main instrument. My set up employed every single input often and used every aux channel. But, mixing desks are very general bits of gear and I always wanted to design one specifically for the kinds of thing I was doing. Sliders or rotary controls?Well for live playing/mixing it has to be rotary!!

Heres that Blackout gig which was a improv collab with Team Brick. Think it was his first gig. I remember that the track I ended upn playing was called ‘Garageone’ and Ive got loads of versions of this on CD.

Heres an mp3 (most of these digital version are mp3s) that is un-named. The whole process of naming tracks was tiresome and really only becomes necessary when you need to write it down, say for a release or for record keeping. In the end I used a framework idea, ‘The Bristol Channel’ and drew ideas from that whole geographic area to help name things. It was also a nod to Basic Channel.

Here is a list of most of the gigs I did.

  • Feb 2003. Cube Cinema. As trio ‘Vi’ with Peter and Geir. Support for E.A.R.
  • June 2003. Ashton Court Festival, Blackout Tent. With Team Brick.
  • 24th September 2004. Mutant Textures, Cosies, Bristol. Float records.(first solo show)
  • 17th November 2004. Cube Cinema. Support for Pole.
  • 31st October 2004. Cube Cinema. Support for Duodecimo. Under_score night.
  • 1st April 2004. Louisiana, Bristol. Support for Black Dice.
  • 22nd September 2005. Cube Cinema. Support for Lawrence English.
  • 2nd Feb 2006. Tollgate House, Bristol. Commission. Live Oscillascope mix
  • 9th March 2007. Cube Cinema as support for Semiconductor vs Antannae Farm.
  • 2nd June 2007. Venn Festival, Bristol. Arnofini Dark Studio.
  • 22nd September 2007. Spike Island, Bristol. QUWACK(E) Collaboration and solo.
  • 27th October . Cube Cinema, Bristol. Support for Andy Moor and DJ rupture.
  • 20th November 2007. Corsica Studios, London. Suport for Murcof.
  • 19th May 2008. Cube Cinema, Bristol. Support for ‘Stars Of The Lid’. With Tom Taylor and 16mm projections.
  • 25th April 2009. Ambush Cinema. Blaxhall Village Hall. With Team Brick and Dokkebi Q.
  • 10th – 18th September 2009. Various locations around the Bristol Channel.
  • 28th November 2009. Cube Cinema. Solo and duet with Max Eastley.
  • 2010. Residency at WORM (former Old Harbour building) making tracks to 16mm optical sound.
  • 2nd April 2011. Cube Cinema. Solo as part of the Cubes Radiophonic Workshop weekend.
  • H&H. Residents night at Cube Cinema. 2nd November 2012?
  • Tape release on Ralphs ‘Magic And Dreams’ label, 12,000 seconds (with Hacker Farm).
  • Last one I remember was at the Cube, one of Jo’s (qujunk) nights.???

missing (need to source.) Arnolfini sound for Rods projections / var CHCHCHCHC sound performances (on bill with Metalking-Riojim) / Arnolfini support for David Grubbs / Stroud show with hoppo (H&H really) / at Shangri-La at glastonbury, late one with load of K-heads / Toxic Dancehall one /

Here is a schematic I made so I could keep track of what I was doing. They seemed really complex then but now they look really simple. Basically I was running a kind of ‘compact MIDI studio’. The only interesting thing in there if anyone really gives a shit is the CV outputs that Bass-stations can do which let me run more gear from less trigger sources.

This diagram was a different way of visualising machines, in terms of their function and how they relate to other machines.

ALL recordings, when composing, rehearsing and practising were made to CD recorder. Heres a photo I took of my early setup shortly after moving into Princess Row studios. The CD-writer is in the rack on the right somewhere. Those speakers were £30 from Maplins. Because I was trying to run what was a ‘portable studio’, when live gigs came up I would have to case everything up and transport it. This was always an incredibly stressfull, cable-bashing nightmare that I never really came to terms with. People back then were rocking up and playing with laptops. I used to think “fucking hell I’ve made life hard for myself with no real gain”.

Those speakers were £30 from Maplins. The valve EQ was nice though, I sold it later when I needed some money.

Although I hate the track demonstrated in this video, it shows quite well the process of making or at least performing a live track.

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