This arrangement of Artwash was recorded before the version that appears on the Surplus EP. It was recorded before I had decided to eschew the use of conventional 'spatialising' echo and reverb effects, and to mix all the songs to mono. The version of the song on the EP was also played and sung live, direct to hard drive, without any effects. It's been something of a characteristic of my song writing and recording processes that they often begin with more complex instrumentation arrangements before arriving at more minimal finished versions. This isn't so much an 'essentialist' exercise, I'm not attempting to get to the 'essence' of a song, it's more that complexity is an early stage in the compositional process, and simplification is a development of that process.
Showing posts with label SoundCloud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SoundCloud. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 September 2015
Artwash
This arrangement of Artwash was recorded before the version that appears on the Surplus EP. It was recorded before I had decided to eschew the use of conventional 'spatialising' echo and reverb effects, and to mix all the songs to mono. The version of the song on the EP was also played and sung live, direct to hard drive, without any effects. It's been something of a characteristic of my song writing and recording processes that they often begin with more complex instrumentation arrangements before arriving at more minimal finished versions. This isn't so much an 'essentialist' exercise, I'm not attempting to get to the 'essence' of a song, it's more that complexity is an early stage in the compositional process, and simplification is a development of that process.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Winter Soup sound
Winter Soup was made to accompany two-projector 16mm film work Autumn Fog by Lynn Loo, performed at Unconscious Archive 4 at Apiary Studios, Hackney, London yesterday evening. This particular performance was actually recorded today as the live performance was not recorded.
I first performed an accompaniment for Autumn Fog last year at Seeing in the Dark in Newcastle. In Autumn Fog Lynn explores the colours of leaves in her back garden, superimposing positive and negative 16mm film in live projection. For the performances I recorded sounds in my own backyard and read a text relating observations of events in the backyard and its proximity. The text was layered live using a looping record unit. For each performance I made a new recording and text in order to make the work as temporally close as possible to the everyday specificity at the time of the performance.
Friday, 21 October 2011
live at Seeing in the Dark
live at Seeing in the Dark by Steven Ball
Soundtracks performed to Vowels & Consonants by Lynn Loo & Guy Sherwin and Autumn Fog by Lynn Loo, recorded live at Seeing in the Dark, CIRCA, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 19 October 2011.
The Vowels & Consonants soundtrack replays and manipulates samples of Bob Cobbing reading with additional live utterances. Autumn Fog is based on a recording of my back yard (the leaves in the film were shot in Lynn's backyard), with spoken quotidian observation.
"...Vowels and Consonants consists of six projected loops in which individual letters appear intermittently crawling up and across the surface of the screen, occasionally intruding into the optical sound area, thus emitting gentle plops of sound which seem to emulate the sound of the letters. As in other optical sound works the relationship between image and sound is integral: while the use of letters suggests a literal ‘reading’ it also resembles ‘concrete’ text such as Bob Cobbing used with Koncrete Kanticle, used as much to prompt vocal sounds in performance as to be read as conventional poetic text. As such the work becomes, like concrete or performance poetry, a score for itself. In fact, Loo and Sherwin have regularly extended the work with the addition of live sound and musical accompaniment, often local to the place of performance and, in this context, the projectors become instruments, part of an ensemble. "
Steven Ball, 'Conditions of Music: Contemporary Audio-Visual Spatial Performance Practice', Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film (Tate Publications, 2011)
The Vowels & Consonants soundtrack replays and manipulates samples of Bob Cobbing reading with additional live utterances. Autumn Fog is based on a recording of my back yard (the leaves in the film were shot in Lynn's backyard), with spoken quotidian observation.
"...Vowels and Consonants consists of six projected loops in which individual letters appear intermittently crawling up and across the surface of the screen, occasionally intruding into the optical sound area, thus emitting gentle plops of sound which seem to emulate the sound of the letters. As in other optical sound works the relationship between image and sound is integral: while the use of letters suggests a literal ‘reading’ it also resembles ‘concrete’ text such as Bob Cobbing used with Koncrete Kanticle, used as much to prompt vocal sounds in performance as to be read as conventional poetic text. As such the work becomes, like concrete or performance poetry, a score for itself. In fact, Loo and Sherwin have regularly extended the work with the addition of live sound and musical accompaniment, often local to the place of performance and, in this context, the projectors become instruments, part of an ensemble. "
Steven Ball, 'Conditions of Music: Contemporary Audio-Visual Spatial Performance Practice', Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film (Tate Publications, 2011)
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