Thirty minutes of experimental music made in response to a haiku poem, curated by Marco Alessi of Naviar Records and Naviar’s international community of composers. This edition features music made by Naviar’s community inspired by Santoka Taneda’s poem “Above my head – / The burning summer sky, / Begging and walking.”
by Dominic J. Jaeckle & Nadia de Vries
Verse & Chorus
Readers, in order of appearance
Nadia de Vries;
Cíntia Gil;
Diamanda La Berge Dramm;
Mark Lanegan;
Stanley Schtinter;
Becket Flannery;
Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset;
Matthew Shaw;
& Duke Garwood.
An exquisite corpse of an “I” played out in a multiplicity of voices, Verse & Chorus is an experimental act of collaborative reworking that quilts and collages cuts from two manuscripts (Jaeckle and de Vries) into an imagined third object. In order of appearance, the piece assembles readings from Nadia de Vries, Cíntia Gil, Diamanda La Berge Dramm, Mark Lanegan, Stanley Schtinter, Becket Flannery, and Vilde Valerie Bjerke Torset, with an accompaniment of borrowed songs and original music from Matthew Shaw, Mark Lanegan, and Duke Garwood.
Jaeckle and de Vries writings are excerpted from two collections published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe; Jaeckle’s 36 Exposures and de Vries’ I Failed to Swoon, 2021. Verse & Chorus was first broadcast on Montez Press Radio (New York), 29.01.21, and was broadcast thereafter as an element of the online programme for the 2021 edition of Rewire Festival (The Hague, Netherlands), 06.05.21.
This twitter-verse feed takes philosophy personally, mixmasters it up with best friends and late-night movie simulations. While there are encounters by the galore, and biographical instants dropped like crumbs on a forest walk, the focus here is not on the story, but the lighting, the staging, the choreography of digression. Talk about talking. In these mirrors are reflections of a lost brother, an almost date, an almost self, on the times we used to have, the blood rites we shared until we couldn’t. […] Pensive, coiled, we are dropped in the midst of a drama that will need to bury a few Russian philosophers before life can begin again. And coursing through it all this essential belief: that the right painted apple, the right sentence, the right thought: would change the world. The revolution is in the waiting room.
Mike Hoolboom, on Jaeckle’s 36 Exposures
I Failed to Swoon fails to swoon; it relays; it blurts; like someone breaking bad news to you, but about themselves and with no bedside manner, who then moves to sit somewhere else while maintaining eye contact; De Vries is a poet of barbed brevity, brutal idiom, figgety desire and delicious deadpan, like fresh white spit on a patent leather shoe; what can you do but hold up your fist of horns and believe her entirely?
Jack Underwood, on de Vries’ I Failed to Swoon
With aphorism, deep pith, and humour, Nadia de Vries delivers her sly lines and contrarian point of view with great force, making an uncomfortable music. I Failed to Swoon keeps it real. It has menace.
Peter Gizzi, on de Vries’ I Failed to Swoon
Artwork Jason Shulman, ‘Lenticular Marilyn,’ © 2017
Into The Wild is a recorded sound excursion from Brighton Station to Stanmer Park, West Sussex, England, discovering sound marks of the city and its enchanting environs, winding up in the unique garden community of Stanmer Organics. Produced by members of Sound Art Brighton to celebrate World Listening Day 2023. World Listening Day takes place every July 18 to honour the birthday of Canadian composer and environmentalist R. Murray Schafer, often credited as the founder of acoustic ecology. Many thanks to Chris Sciacca (sound recordist, editor and producer) and Kersten Glandien (executive producer).
A live performance of improvised and reimagined music and text from the project “Dead Cat Bounce” – a collaborative performance work by Gary Zhexi Zhang and Waste Paper Opera, telling tales of time, money and the unmaking of reality in the wake of catastrophe. The original piece unfolds over five vignettes, blurring the lines between capitalism and ritual, finance and nature, belief and manifestation. The original score merges the Baroque music of Niccolò Jommelli and J.S.Bach with mimetic improvisation, choral rounds, synthpop and the textures of public speaking. “Dead Cat Bounce” takes the form of an oratorio, a medium of vocal performance used to deliver a sacred narrative.
Music by James Oldham. Text by Gary Zhexi Zhang and Klara Kofen. Violin – Chihiro Ono; drums – Cameron Graham; additional performer/band leader – James Oldham; banker/reader – Klara Kofen; banker/Namazu – Gary Zhexi Zhang; Mezzo soprano (Jeremiah) – Suzie Purkis; Baritone (Real Estate Agent of Miami) – Themba Mvula; chorus – Jacob Bolton, Keir Cooper, Gabriella Demczuk, Klara Kofen, Livvy Lynch, Themba Mvula, James Oldham, Suzie Purkis, Gary Zhexi Zhang. Thanks to Resonance Extra, Milo Thesiger-Meacham and Travis Yu.
Waste Paper Opera is an experimental music theatre collective currently based in London. Defining “Waste Paper” as any found text with the potential for recontextualisation, we write music, build structures, make costumes, and write stories using Waste Paper.
Currently based in London, for Radia singer-songwriter That Travis revisited their work “New Poem.” Originally released in 2021, the EP dived into the spaciousness within their imagination through songwriting and weaving woodwinds with voice. Experiencing lockdown at the time, they lived through solitude with one eye open; while the other one was reserved, longing for intimacy. That Travis is originally from Hong Kong, with a background of a colonised education and indigenous Hong Kong traditions. While the two worlds fight for presentation within their work, they exhibit an organic mixture of all influences through sonic expressions, lyrics and visual aids.
An audio-only version of Secret Set (https://vimeo.com/653411081) which features an original script, soundtrack and set; field recordings; video found on the SD cards of secondhand cameras; digital photography; handheld, webcam and drone footage; and CGI. Narrated by Kadence Neill.
Written for Christof Migone’s online event AND, 12 December 2021, presented by Alt Space Loop, Arraymusic, Avatar Centre, Errant Bodies Press, Fado, Radius, Resonance Extra, squint.press, Wave Farm, Western University and Zone Sound Creative.
Milo Thesiger-Meacham:
https://soundcloud.com/milotm
https://vimeo.com/milotm
https://www.instagram.com/_milotm_/
Loss in Translation
Drawn from the research of Social Distance, Digital Congregation: British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19 at Manchester University, England, ‘Loss in Translation’ is a montage piece interweaving the voices of funeral and death care professionals across faiths and people who have lost loved ones during the pandemic from interviews recorded remotely during the UK’s tough winter lockdown restrictions of 2021. This is a sociological piece reflecting on how important religious and non- religious rituals are and the potentially long-term trauma incurred when they are taken away. We discover the initiation of a ‘standing stone,’ erected as a memorial for this time when death has been so present in many people’s lives.
Researched by Paulina Kolata and produced by Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts) and Sasha Edye-Lindner. With thanks to contributors Toby Angel, Tim Ashton, Peter Gaskin, Louise Winter, Waheed Khan, Lisa Wilkinson, Rachel Meyer, Shoayb Bux, Miri Lawrence and Perry Meyer.
‘Loss in Translation’ was a runner up in this year’s Prix Archives de la Parole category at the Phonurgia Nova awards. http://phonurgia.fr/2021/10/02/palmares-2021/
Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts, UK)
As a sound artist, radio producer, community facilitator and educator, Lucia Scazzocchio has been nurturing and curating diverse and disparate stories and conversations that weave individual personal narratives as a way to help us better understand the wider social context. She calls this ‘Social Broadcasting’. Driven by creating engaging participatory radio and audio experiences that she ‘audioscapes’ into imaginative on and off-line broadcast initiatives and formats, Social Broadcasting represents the versatility of audio as an evolving social and artistic medium. https://www.socialbroadcasts.co.uk/
A work for radio by Mark Vernon, winner of the 2020 Phonurgia Nova Award, prepared for Resonance FM. Magneto Mori is an exploration of tape recording as a form of memory storage. In this iteration the location is the Irish mountain town of Kilfinane. Using a portable reel to reel tape recorder sounds from around the town were recorded onto the first side of the tape over a two day period – dripping rain, creaky gates, car mechanics, drainpipes, shops, church bells, refrigerator cabinets, wind blowing through the trees, passing traffic, etc. were just some of the sounds encountered. On the second side were compiled voices of Kilfinane – extracts from the personal radio archives of Diarmuid McIntyre and Grey Heron Media that date back as far as twenty years or more. The recordings selected consisted mostly of local history, coverage of community events, news stories of local interest and interviews with a variety of Kilfinane residents. Using tape as an analogy for the frailty of human memory this tape was then cut into pieces of random length, freeing the sounds from their linear, chronological sequence. The tape cuttings were then intermingled with a collection of magnets that de-magnetise (thus erasing) portions of the tape. The tape (along with the magnets) was then buried in a hole in the grounds of the local school. After several days steeped in the earth of Kilfinane the remaining audio fragments were exhumed. Dirty, mangled and partially erased the tape was washed, dried and spliced back together in a random order ready for playback. This process of recording, emancipation from chronology, burial, erasure over time, unearthing and the reassembly of jumbled fragments for playback parallels the operation of memory and recall. Experience, retention, buried memories, forgetting, distortions, recall and chronological inaccuracies are all aspects of the human memory process. The main difference being that our memory is selective and plays an active role in what it chooses to remember or forget rather than the arbitrary procedures that are in operation here. Once the tape was cut into pieces there was no way of telling which fragments were which and in the process of splicing the tape back together the voice recordings gathered over a twenty year period became interspersed with the sounds of those two days spent making field recordings in the area. Further digital recordings were also made around the same location during the period of the tape’s interment. The contrast between these higher fidelity field recordings and the degraded analogue sounds added a further substrata of time to the process.
“Kabuk Kebuk Kibuk Kobuk Kubuk Kabok Kebok Kibok Kobok Kubok Kabik Kebik Kibik Kobik Kubik Kabek Kebek Kibek Kobek Kubek Kabak Kebak Kibak Kobak Kubak Kacuk Kecuk Kicuk Kocuk Kucuk Kacok Kecok Kicok Kocok Kucok Kacik Kecik Kicik Kocik Kucik Kacek Kecek Kicek Kocek Kucek Kacak Kecak Kicak Kocak Kucak Kaduk Keduk Kiduk Koduk Kuduk Kadok Kedok Kidok Kodok Kudok Kadik Kedik Kidik Kodik Kudik Kadek Kedek Kidek Kodek Kudek Kadak Kedak Kidak —–
Em’ree! Emeral’… Emerald!…“
One from the vaults this time. The Resonance Radio Orchestra realised this acoustmatic radio opera, The Death of Kodak, as part of rough for opera on Tuesday 3 November 2015 at 7.30pm at The Cockpit Theatre, London. The line up comprised Rodney Earl Clarke (pictured): voice (as Rochester, New York); Richard Scott: voice (as Eastman Kodak); Louise Goodwin: percussion; the late Simon King: electric guitar; Elo Masing: amplified violin; Markus Sasse: bass guitar; Milo Thesiger-Meacham: electric guitar; and Chris Weaver: electronics. Ed Baxter provided concept, text (see above) and direction. Piers Gibbon did the voice over. The graphic score was flashed onto the retinas of the players in a completely dark space, bringing the score inside the human body for the first time – the only radical development in the score for the last half century. The text comprises (a) all the variations which led Eastman to select the till then meaningless word “Kodak”; and (b) a fragment from the lyrics of Blind Willie McTell’s eccentric love song, Travelin’ Blues. The performance was realised in acousmatic fashion, in total darkness, though a few luminous yellow ropes hung from the rafters to define the space for the live audience.
It took a year or more to think of a sequel to The Exeter Whisper (2018), a radio work realised with 400 primary school children in which a short text decayed and revivified under pressure of being passed along individually and being misheard and reinterpreted. This time I searched for a transparent and static text as a point of departure. I settled on the phrase “God Save The Queen” for five reasons. First, it is something one never actually says; secondly, it is something one never actually thinks; thirdly, everyone in the UK knows precisely what it means and carries a civic weight; fourthly, it is essentially meaningless, especially perhaps to a republican atheist such as myself; and finally, it is a phrase which will become extinct when the present Queen dies, as she shortly will. Initially I wanted to have lots of people repeat the phrase so as to provide a map of regional accents and dialect, perhaps drawing on Members of Parliament as speakers. The corona virus crisis meant that faced with the Radia deadline I had instead to do this sketch on the spot, using a standard industrial sound effects unit which brought out the tones of my own received pronunciation and seemed instantly to dictate rhythm, diction, and a sense of musicality and ham theatre I had not anticipated. This is a live recording made in real time on the afternoon of Tuesday 16 March 2020 in Resonance FM’s Frank Howling Studio. It is dedicated to Michael Umney and Margot Gibbs on the occasion of the postponement of their wedding. Title by Anthony Moore.