Recent reading…
Haruki Murakami A wild sheep chase London: Harvill
Harry Partch Genesis of music New York: Da Capo
Ian Stewart Natures numbers London: Orion
Goscinny & Uderzo Asterix and the chieftans shield London: Hodder
Lloyd Spencer & Andrzej Krauze Hegel for beginners Cambridge: Icon
Guy Debord Society of the spectacle New York: Zone Books
David Minton Teaching skills in further and adult education London: Thomson
Yvonne Hillier Reflective teaching in further education London: Continuum
Augusto Boal Theatre of the oppressed London: Pluto Press
Raymond Williams Culture and materialism London: Verso
Variant Issue 35 summer 09 Glasgow: Variant
Oliver Sacks Musicophilia London: Picador
George Lewis A power stronger than itself: The AACM and amercian experiemental music London: University of Chicago Press
Herman Hesse The glass bead game London: Penguin
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the oppressed London: Penguin
28th November
Saturday evening in about a month and a bit should be a great night of free playing and improvising! Do come down if you have the opportunity…
x
Spiral Compositions
Started work on a few drawings after having not really done any drawing work for quite a few months. This began just trying to start out with one of the simplest shapes and one of the first recorded marks by mankind: theres spirals all over prehistoric stuff. Also it tied in with some of the ideas relating to microtonality or true tonality or Just Intonation; whichever you want to call it: that the circle of 5ths actually being a spiral due to tiny differences in frequency as you add up.
Also wandered about the possiblities of using spirals in graphic scores: a great shape to describe shape, mass and weight as well as giving an impression of length, could be combined with boxes and shapes as potential time indicators too.
Currently Im also figuring out some actual practical applications of whole tone ratios for the guitar. After a summer reading up on the ideas of Harry Partch and Just Intonation and being slightly bemused but very excited about the theoritical possiblities I finally realised a bit of simple maths, a ruler and a glass slide was all I needed to actual make it practically relevant with the guitar.
Im going to put a longer post explaining all this in a lot more detail once I feel like ive totally got to grips with it!
x
Kalbakken in a field in Levenshulme
Summertime a few years ago I think, at the Klondyke in Levenshulme supporting Lianne Hall and Drei. Was such a charming June evening we decided to play out in what passes for a wild flower meadow in Lev. From what I recall there was only one incident with a passing car; there was also an audience, sadly out of shot, I suspect we’re probably trying to interact with them in the middle shot.
In the final one im playing my esraj, its only live outing so far. You can hear it on the Kalbakken record though, track 9 I think.
Thanks to Bela for the photos and Daz for lending me his lovely Taylor guitar you can see in the first two pictures.
More anarchosyndicalist bike aktion
All photos by Helen Brealey
Some snaps above of our ongoing bicycle based horrorshow live at Islington Mill in Salford last night. Show was notable for my nearly totalling all of the bike based instrument sculptures with my first physical gesture of the set.
Disaster was narrowly avoided via some careful cable wiggling and shouts of “Youve ruined Christmas now Jimmy” from the more lively parts of the audience. Managed to lay down some good grooves though eventually; mostly informed by the rhythmic memory of Huw’s 90s reggae tape that we had on repeat in the Volvo on the way over. You can’t make this stuff up.
Bike Orchestra wise we’re playing on the Thursday 29th of October as part of the Vaudeville night at the Greenroom in Manchester. We will be in the studio with the talented and brave Joshua Kopecek in the next few weeks and hopefully this session will produce material for a download and CDR release on Manchester’s Concrete Moniker and a tape split on Ikuisuus.
x
Manchester Ship Canal
Picture taken heading from Trafford Bridge towards the Lowry along the promenade on my way to rehearsal last night with Ad Hoc dance. There’s a lot of incredible open views in that part of town; the expanse of water pushes the horizon way further out. Im not surewhat it’s like in the day time but theres a real desolate end of the world feel at night.These long quaysides totally devoid of people, only the scale gives a hint to the original purpose and labours of the place.
With the music im writing with Ad Hoc ive been trying to isolate fragments from improvising along with the dancers as they put the piece together and then to use this as a more solid base for improvising out of. Refining and refining. Guitar is tuned to D/A/D/Fsharp/A/D Some notes below:
- Paintbrush (point 5) under 9th fret playing on either side with left and right hands. So right hand pulls out rhythmic pulses and some rhythm from guitar body. Left pulls on strings behind brush on guitar neck, can also fret some notes here to produce really clipped chimes.
- Guitar flat in lap brush end 12th fret; percussion on front and sides played with hands and soft mallet; totally open rhythms; timing in response to dancers; they all have individual moves at this point; really open and improvised.
- Sparse slide guitar around the words “aching, arching, anchoring” and their connotations. Added words form dancers own personal writing.
- Piece in Em7 and pulling to D for a duet. Really flows in a welcome energetic way; as with flamenco. This is interspersed with slowly, gentle, mournful passages of making sadness, waking up and remembering the flow from before.
- Interaction of rhythm and movement; not so much finding pulses but watching to find peoples place and individual timing. There’s something with the brain and juxaposition so you start seeing patterns and making sense of whatevers happening?
Performance is on 9th November at the Lowry Studio theatre.
