next weekend

The Dreaming

Is going to be a really busy one, two really exciting performances and a bookfair!

Exhibiting zines/records/cds and my new zine of birdsong drawings on Friday 12th & Saturday 13th at Manchester Artists Bookfair.

Then making music for the performance/installation ‘The Dreaming’ with Bekke Platt and Aliyah Hussain on the Saturday @ 2pm as part of Emergency in Castlefield Gallery. The excellent image above was taken during rehersal for that project.

Finally after the bookfair on the Saturday will be a music drawing performance with Naomi Kendrick and Dan Bridgwood-Hill @ Whitworth Gallery. We’re on about 9pm also on the bill is sound project from Huw Bunford from Super Furry Animals & artist Naomi Kashiwagi.

Cymatic experiments

Been working today on making some films showing some of the methods I’ve used recently to make sound visible; technically speaking I’ve discovered this is cymatics. I became interested in it a few years ago when I inherited a broken marshall 1x 12 combo the speaker of which worked but the amp part was broken, one thing lead to another and with proceding house and studio moves I disemboweled the speaker from the amp and got to carrying out a whole variety of speaker preparations really just as research.

The work I was doing in August with Bekke Platt & Aliyah Hussain for a dance piece (which you can see some of at Castlefield Gallery on 13th October) really set me off thinking about the weird and wonderful things that are possible through finding different ways to make sound visible; these films being just one of them. This was all first sparked by an encounter with Carsten Nicolai’s work via a Gerhard Richter painting on display in the city gallery in Leicester sometime in the early noughties. A summer visit to Manchester’s City Gallery also brought me into contact with a Haroon Mirza sound sculpture which operated in a similar area.

Birchall/Cheetham Duo @ Night & Day

Some classic captures from gig last Thursday by Andy Newcombe many thanks to him for his excellent skills. Me and Andrew opened the evening followed by a set from Motion Detectors (this time was Nick Mitchell, Pascal Nichols and Helmut Lemke) and finally some amazing times from Alan Silva and Roger Turner. You can find shots of the whole evening on Andy’s blog.

Vital Weekly Review of Acoustic Textures

“On his solo CD Birchall plays acoustic guitar with objects on the strings. The objects are also shown, as drawings, in the enclosed booklet. All of this was recorded straight to tape, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a variety of microphones have been used here. Sometimes it sounds close by and sometimes far away. I think he uses spoons, pieces of wood, round objects, saucers maybe, that dance around and do all sort of weird things. All along Birchall plays the strings and does that in a nervous hectic way, certainly in ‘Play As Parable’ and the tracks that follow after that – roughly the second half of the release. Quite a blast, but a very nice one. Totally crazy, wild playing.”

Spitting Feathers review from Foxy Digitalis

nice review here of  recent cdr with Phil Marks and Olie Brice on Foxy Digitalis from Mike Pursley

“On “Spitting Feathers” the talented trio of David Birchall (guitar), Olie Brice (double bass), and Phillip Marks (percussion) produce a clattersome tonal plinking evoking teeming machines con- and de-structing a stone and iron metropolis. These players bear witness to cityscapes from afar and subterranean tunneling within. Behold negative inroads into earth and positive accreting termite tracks’ organic sculptures. Textured like sweetgum balls and quickening taunt over time-lapsed riverbeds dried and cracking, fissures spring forth. Hybrid popcorn improvisation. Shaky excavations. Crystalline. Players bestow handfuls of precious stones by the handful, but uncut and unpolished and still one with the coarser material. Mathematical. Lyrical (but stammering). Space and time within an assemblage of geometric planes. A meaningful collection of shards and slivers.”

Relay 1 Jack Allett/Kalbakken 7″

A package of these just arrived in the post this morning! Looks and sounds awesome. Track from Jack called ‘Lost’ on A side with a Kalbakken work out of a tune ‘Ulversdalen’ which we were playing around with alot on the last tour we did on the flip side; from Jack’s sleeve notes:

“scary, joyous, faithful, irreverent, delicate, boisterous, musically astute, threatening to fall apart…”

Pretty much captures the Kalbakken vibe in one.
Epic drawing by Karel Wouters handscreened by label boss Levi Seeldraeyers looks amazing and smells good too.

http://www.smeraldina-rima.com/products-page/kalbakken/relay-i-jack-allett-kalbakken-7/

Get in touch if you want one!