On Music.

This is a journey into Sound.

Quite a lot of my earliest significant memories are music based. There's little I remember before the age of 12, but I can vividly recall breakfast at my Nan's house at the age of 7, with The Scaffold and The Beatles on the radio in 1970.

I love music with a greater passion than most of the rest of life. Which is ironic, because I am most definitely not a musician or singer. The impossibility of describing my arc through the soundscapes and soundtracks of my life is equal to the impossibility of overstating the importance of music and sound to my life, or the totality of my lack of rhythm - as anyone who has seen me dance will testify.
It is important to say that my listening tastes are esoteric and challenging - I am a picky bugger. It depresses me to hear people say things such as "I know what I like", when it comes to anything cultural. Most of the time, what they mean is "I'm too disinterested/busy/lazy to think about it". Their breadth is narrow, their depth shallow. I am the opposite in as much as I know what I Don't like!

For me, culture is like a vast swampy delta. There are many channels, some are shallow, others run deep. And being the man I am, the backwaters and lost pools are where I'm happiest and at one with - for want of a better term, what I shall call - my soul.
(*notice all the landscape terminology and metaphors?! :D )

There are thousands of musics which you may never have heard of. Balinese gamelan, Tuvaluan throat-singing, Indian raga... contemporary avant-garde... improvised, field recordings - all those endless ends... Music is such a living thing! From birdsong to whale song to the wind across the ocean, through the trees and in your hair, resonating in your chest and bones. I experience music as a visceral life-force that literally resonates with my passion for the Earth and the landscape.

I have many pieces that are challenging to the point of unlistenable - but I keep them for exactly that reason. Such musics deserve extra special attention - 'close-listening' - because of their nature. Given the attention and consideration that they deserve, they can open up new ways of thinking.

Which eventually brings me to the object of this post.

In 2010 I created two sculptures recycling the frame and parts from an old shopping bike. The first static sculpture was made from the wheels and handlebars. It's now lost to the skips of time. The second more kinetic sculpture is still here, and it is this - built with my own fair thumbs.

This is the Bikesichord - an electric harp made from the frame and other bits of the bike, with tuning heads, strings and pickups from an electric guitar. It has a home made built in circuit and produces a chiming, bell-like sound. It is a bit of a bitch to tune though, having twelve strings staggering more or less in the vicinity of the pick ups, and a narrow, flexible tube perforated by the tuning pins.

What makes it interesting though is when you start to experiment with it. Running it through a couple of effects pedals such as delay/loop and overdrive, allows you to create more diverse ambient drones and harmonics. Being all tubular construction means that knocking or tapping the frame will produce a sound, and the pick ups will react to things like electric motors operated in close proximity... All of which makes for a deeply satisfying array of experimental noise making. I've goofed around with this machine many times over the last 6 years, even uploading a couple of tracks to Soundcloud for the brave few. (They're gone now. I just looked. It's been a while. If I re-upload them I'll get back to you... but trust me, it's better this way...)

The Bikesichord was revamped and played by Rusty Sheriff at the opening of "In Rust We Trust" in 2012. And I'm planning on polishing it up again for a performance early in July this year. More on that at a later date. :)

As I have said, it has been sat around for quite a long time now, so later this year it will go up for sale. I've had a lot of fun annoying my neighbours with it and now I feel I'm comfortable with it finding a new home with someone who has a fresh enthusiasm for it. If you're interested, give me a shout.

Meanwhile...

"Stay tuned!!" 

(Heh? Eh? Yeah! Ffnarr)...

:D

Chasing A Bee - Reprise

My friends at Southsea Coffee Co. are supporting Tonic Music For Mental Health with a head shaving event and art auction on Sunday 29th May from 4pm to 5pm.

The auction includes work donated by major names from the local arts communities including MDS, Midge, _feop_, Samo and many others along with myself.

This post is about the bird sculpture that I'm donating.

If you can't make it on the Sunday, here's a link to their fundraising page.
If you can contribute, it would be excellent. If you can't, then at least share :)

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These birds, these birds. What do they represent for me? What are our relationships? How do I read them? I've written quite a lot about the landscapes and the different ways that they're read by myself and others, but not much about the birds.
My relationship with them has largely been fairly shallow, pragmatic and ambivalent since I started making them. Each is unique - independent. From conception to delivery, their journeys are often more convoluted and complex than their static appearance belies.

As a creator, the process is equally as important as the eventual outcome. The journey, without a doubt influences the form of the final piece. Many times they start as one thing and end up as something completely other. The fundamental building of a piece is the most controllable and predictable part of the process - but the formation of the story and the context surrounding each one, directly and physically affects its appearance over time in completely unpredictable ways. It enriches, informs and elevates what might be regarded as a mundane ornament into a piece that claims its own space and identity, its own life. Take this piece for example. This is already a remarkably well travelled bird.

I love the challenge of capturing strong dynamic movement in my pieces. These are living beings. When they are stretching for something they are extraordinary; like cats - with that lightweight construction in a loose flexible package that allows them to defy gravity with a finely controlled elegance. I am lucky enough to live by a large open space where the crowds and crows gather in the summer to feed. The people pick at disposable barbecues and the crows pick at everything that's left behind. When the crowds are gone, the crows remain and scavenge for whatever they can catch. In this case, I was watching this particular bird, darting about in a crazy pattern on the ground looking like a complete novice, until I noticed the fat bee that it was chasing. This fellow was coming to me directly from his prehistoric predatory past in pursuit of his prey. Watching him in action was to experience a fundamental resonance of his ancestors' behaviour.

Except that's not entirely true. There was no bee. I made that up. There was a crow, darting about, unsuccessfully trying to steal a peanut before the other birds got there. It was a bit of a dunce as crows go. All of the youthful vigour, with none of the nous of older, more experienced birds. All action and no focus. And that came through in the initial sculpture - lots of pointless running about, chasing aimlessly...

But he was done - finished - ready. I photographed him, put him up on Big Cartel, Artfinder, Instagram, Twitter - all the usual places, to a lukewarm "Mhhmm" from those audiences. That was ok. Sometimes pieces need space and time to grow into themselves. For a while he kicked about aimlessly like a shiftless teenager, and then I stuck him on EBay.

He was eventually bought by a lady in Cheltenham. Then promptly returned as "Not working/Defective". A subtle but accurate description of his failure to impress, as both a character and a sculpture. It turned out that this woman had bought him as a gift for her autistic grandson who had befriended a wild crow in his garden. The boys mother was horrified at the sharp edges and afraid that her son would cut himself to ribbons. Granny insisted that it was 'unsuitable for sale' on Health and Safety grounds. I pointed out that this was a sculpture - not a toy! During the negotiation for the return however, it transpired that Granny and her husband run an online contemporary glass and ceramics gallery... Make of it what you will. Ultimately, I gave in and refunded their money. The bird came back. But now he was beginning to develop a patina, some kind of sheen - a bit of character.

Music often provides a useful reference point. I remembered a track called 'Chasing A Bee' from the first Mercury Rev album 'Yerself Is Steam'. It struck me as a nice metaphor for this crow and his living counterpart. The bird and the bee bumbling about aimlessly and energetically. There was a resonance in the idea. They could focus on each other, which gives them both a sense of direction and a relationship. So I made a bee. We all need a bee...

Around the same time, I decided that this piece needed a different kind of exposure. An alternate route into whatever life he will eventually lead, a different purpose and a new platform from which he could speak about his misspent youth chasing bees, his mistaken identity and his return, and his transformation and completion through finding a redeeming spirit that resonates on so many levels. So they will go together to raise awareness and funds in the event below.

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**Reprise

My friends at Southsea Coffee Co. are supporting Tonic Music For Mental Health with a head shaving event and art auction on Sunday 29th May from 4pm to 5pm.

The auction includes work donated by major names from the local arts communities including MDS, Midge, _feop_, Samo and many others along with myself.

If you can't make it on the Sunday, here's a link to their fundraising page.
If you can contribute, it would be excellent. If you can't, then at least share :)