May 25th & 26th, 2013

During last year’s April, Genevieve Murphy took Hannes Fritsch and I to Dance Works in Rotterdam to work with her on this new piece and it should have lightbulbs and contact mics and yeah there should be eggshells and moonboots too and loads of mini accordions and at least ten dancers and, and… Right? So we did, and a year later she’d sorted the whole thing out with two sold out dates at the iconic De Melkweg. We all went over a couple of weeks early, and did insane amounts of head-scratching in the Amsterdam rain. Almost a kilometre of cable, days spent up a crane, forty-two lightbulbs, twenty-six rolls of tape, a bunch of soundcards and a badly timed explosion later, it actually happened.

Twice, really well. The whole thing was like a nightmare, three-dimensional sudoku, and easily one of the hardest and most rewarding things ever. I dreamed of signal routing and artificial starlight every night. Thanks, Genevieve. And thanks Hannes, for pointing out my programming muppetries. And thanks Christina, for the steed and the marvellous bed on the stunning Prinsengracht. Mooier had echt niet gekund. Y’all come to the show when we land it in the +44.

May 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 2013

Together with Christabel Stirling and with the help of Martyn Harry, we put together a three-day festival of some really great music at Modern Art Oxford. Performances from Tim Hecker, Mountains, Bjarni Gunnarsson, BJ Nilsen, Simon Scott, Ex-Easter Island Head and the mighty Oval. Also a lecture from Markus Popp at Ertegun House, followed by an interview led by the Wire’s Anne Hilde Neset. These people came from everywhere.

Every night was crammed, but I think the opening and closing shows took the crown. So many bodies, so many bodily fluids. The venue was hot and the music was loud. Transcripts, interesting essays and a short documentary film on the way. Preparations for next year’s edition well underway. Huge thanks, in no particular order, to our volunteers, Lou for her rock-like qualities, Hannes Fritsch for doing such a brilliant job with the sound all day everyday, Bryan and Anita and the Ertegun Programme, Oxford University Press’ John Fell Fund, Oxford University Music Faculty, Oxford Brookes’ Sonic Art Research Unit, Oxford Contemporary Music, Kay Sentance and everybody at Oxford Modern Art, everybody who helped us to push the shows, everybody who came. (Gasp).

August, 2011

A new Lärmlicht, composed in residence at CMMAS, the national institute for music and sonic art in Mexico. It’s composed from lightbulbs, visually and sonically. (Spot the celeste). The fixed media version looks and sounds like this:

Thanks very much to CMMAS, whose facilities and hospitality were top notch all the way through, especially when the studio was hit by lightning and everything almost ended. (Almost actually). Also for providing such a great place to work and to meet people doing cool things. Lärmlicht #4 is coming to film festivals & performance spaces near you soon. In the meantime, press PLAY. Then tweet it.

Addendum: If you’re in the south of England at the end of October, come to the Scott Polar Research Institute on the 30th, to see & hear a 9-channel A/V installation written with Sarah McKee, who is a Very Fine writer. Celebrating 100 years of improvements in the outdoor apparel industry. (Not really).

saturday 23rd July, 2011

Together with a whole bunch of brilliant people, we brought Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to Peckham Multi Storey Car Park, in London. There was an education workshop, an orchestra of 100 players from all around the country, a DJ set from Gabriel Prokofiev, a sculpture park, and a Very Nice Bar. That sold Campari. It’s still there. A thousand people came.  Jack Farrell took pictures, and they look like this:

Richard Morris of the Times called it the ‘most exciting development in classical music for decades, if not centuries’, while The Arts Desk wrote that the sounds ‘rumbled out over London as if only now under the low concrete ceiling were they finding their true voice’. They must have liked it.

You can find more documentation of the project over at the site, and scour the web for the many echoes of excited bloggers and tweetahs. Thanks to mo peeps Ed Irwin-Singer, Chris Stark and Kate Whitley, Bold Tendencies, Nonclassical, Frank’s Café, and aaaaaall the individuals involved.

In other news, we did another Carmen Elektra night. More operas, dance music and warm tinned beer, this time in a big condemned warehouse on the edge of Cambridge. Click here for pitchas & reviews.

saturday 11th june ’11

Another outing for the litebox, this time at Sheffield’s Portland Works, at a night called Vex, organized by Hand Of and played at by an armful of really good composers and coders and DJs. Andrey Vasilyev took a brilliant photo – look at the faces:

You can read about Vex on Sheffieldblog and in Article Magazine. Rumour has it that Now Then are furiously scribbling, printing and posting +ve/-ve words. Keep an eye. Big thanks to Lou and the Good Souls at Hand Of, to William Cheshire, Liam Mitchell, Alex McLean, Alex Wright. Remember the name Tom Rozwadowski, who is a shy boy not on the internet, and writes fine, fine musics.

Also, by means of a brief addendum, read about Vex and Lärmlicht #1 in a Drowned in Sound feature here. Nice.

sunday 24th october ’10

Lärmlicht #1, performed to and with a keen, full house at VIVID gallery in Digbeth, east Birmingham, as part of the super really good Supersonic Festival, organized by Capsule. Your heroes Dosh and King Midas Sound headlined.

Mr. Underwood, also with the help of the aujunce, played a very neat rethinking of Reich’s Pendulum Music, with swinging torches and light sensors.

Tipped hats and warmest gratitudes to Laura Coult and VIVID who set the whole thing up, to Jonathan Green for the technicals, to Boozo Bisto for the photo, and to M. Snape, who rescued everything from the jaws of oblivion.