David Birchall

Mopomoso Pictures

davidmbirchall — Sun, 19 May 2013 20:27:37 +0000

Great set of photos from the talented lens of Andy Newcombe of the Mopomoso gig in Manchester here

http://jazztourist.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/mopomoso-manchester-30-4-13/

Photo above shows Matt Wand, myself and Richard Harrison.

and video of same set:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnDOIJ6mYRo

new sounds with Sam Andreae & Andrew Cheetham

davidmbirchall — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:50:19 +0000

Been doing some great playing in last few months with Sam Andreae and this has started developing into a trio with Andrew Cheetham. It’s been a really great meeting point for us all to play, we all have approached the music from very different points of view but seem to have arrived at a point of developing some kind of mutual language. Gigs and recordings to follow. A taste here meanwhile…

Staff Room 3 Show

davidmbirchall — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:18:14 +0000

Some great documentation here of the show and opening of the Staff Room 3 show at Z Arts a few weeks ago. It runs to the end of the month, definitely worth a visit.

New Bike Sculpture

davidmbirchall — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 11:20:29 +0000

Designed by Huw and myself and crafted by his fair hands. Bike Orchestra practices with this as the only sonic source have been going great. Gigs to follow later in the year.

new Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra stuff

davidmbirchall — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:04:47 +0000

Been doing some really exciting work the last month or two designing new bike instruments with Huw. He’s made a little teasing video during his building… some pictures to follow.

slowly we have been finding new ways to play and the new piece which works much more like a huge amplified sculpture than the last pieces. Getting some music we’re really pleased with now.

You can hear them as they appear here

https://soundcloud.com/lev-bike-orchestra

and there’s more infos and the group here http://levenshulmebicycleorchestra.wordpress.com/

Birchall/Cheetham Duo in Nottingham

davidmbirchall — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:16:35 +0000

Thanks to Yvonne Lake for video of the Chameleon gig last Sunday.

Highgate Cementery

davidmbirchall — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:29:01 +0000

Last Friday afternoon I had some free time between two moving and fun evenings watching the Instant Composers Pool at the Vortex so I took a trip up to Highgate cemetery. This came to be as part of a long considered mission to see where Karl Marx is buried. Having failed the last time I was in London to make it even though I fully intended to get there it seemed like too good a chance to miss. My previous date with it having been given over to the Horniman Museum’s instrument collection in Forest Hill. I took the tube to Archway then walked up the hill past school kids and people getting on and off buses with granny trolleys. Managed to get pleasantly lost and walk pretty much all the way round the perimeter of the graveyard before finding the entrance. The cemetery is surrounded by incredible houses which must date from when Highgate was an outlying district of the city; the area around the graveyard has the real feel of a small hamlet enveloped by London. Once inside it is a strange little world all to itself; a small universe managed by volunteers making decisions by committee. Its easy to move about on the main paths which are paved but all the smaller ones resemble muddy country tracks moving between some wonderful old trees. Graves with roots wrapping round them. It’s a great place. Marx’s headstone is of course something of a social realist nightmare a huge concrete plinth with a sculpture of his head atop. It’s not the original headstone, which was apparently much more modest; the current one was raised by subscription by The Communist Party Of Great Britain in 1954. I spent a couple of pleasant moments there thinking.

Around me two Spanish couples and a group of middle aged German men I imagine to be a Trade Unionists holiday outing from the Ruhr Valley are taking pictures. I walk down the hill stopping off to draw birdsong at Patrick Caulfield’s self designed “DEAD” memorial, Douglas Adams and at a few other points on the many benches dotted about. The day before I’d picked up a really interesting looking double CD of British birdsong published by the British Library and CD by Ostad Elai from Honest Johns in Ladbroke Grove. More on to come no doubt.

Music Drawing in Longsight

davidmbirchall — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:46:45 +0000

Panorama of Saturdays performance at The Roby in Longsight with Dan Bridgwood-Hill and Naomi Kendrick taken by Andrew Brooks.

13th Feb @ Kraak

davidmbirchall — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:52:26 +0000

Great looking poster made by Edwin for this gig at Kraak in February. Going to be a splendid evening of guitar music.

Perceptions and time

davidmbirchall — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:42:21 +0000

Was set off thinking by doing a bit of research last week into some links provided by the dancer Katie Duck on her webspace centred around exploring scientific research into the brain and perception. Out of this I focused on the idea that our perception of time can be change when involved with work like improvising. I’ve been thinking to try and attend one of the workshops she runs and was interested in looking at this material as it seemed to form the basis of a lot of the work she does in them.

I’m guessing its a familiar experience of other people involved with playing improvised, free and open musics to find that a large period of time has expired while playing when you perceived only brief moments and vice versa. However, one thing I’ve experienced the more I’ve played is that I have a pretty good idea in terms of my own internal body rhythm of how long half an hour or an hour is when playing; this is partly to do I think with stamina for playing and partly through having been in situations improvising repeatedly so have learned on basic level how those periods of time can be experienced. The thing that’s interesting is the experience of detail in those moments, often a huge amount of information is being processed and exchanged in very small periods of time; at other points a single idea maybe sustained over a longer period with details within it coming to the surface. The experience of silence and pauses can be incredible; fragments of a second feeling like great yawning chasms. Co-existing rhythms that are both imperceivably slow as they are at the same skittish and driving. The use of repetiton with detail inside working towards the feeling of trance and suspense (and also elongation) of time which what we experienced last summer in Morocco seeing the Master Musicians of Joujouka .

In my reading today came across a great part in Robert Macfarlane’s “The Wild Places” that seemed to serve as a good allusion,

“In the Basin I had come to imagine time differently, or at least experience it differently. Time seemed not to express itself not in terms of minutes and hours, but in shades and textures… The Basin kept many different types of time, and not all of them were slow. I had seen quickness there too: the sudden drop of a raven in flight, the veer of water rund a rock, the darts of damselflies, the midges who were born, danced and died in a single day. But it was the great chronologies of its making- the ice’s intentless progress seawards down a slope of time- which had worked on my mind most powerfully.”