Wheatsheaf show video

I've uploaded a video of last Monday's performance at the Wheatsheaf. Thanks to my Lauren for the capture.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-mXYDSjzIqY

Sweeney and Louth-Robins play the EMU

Last night I performed at the EMU Space supporting Panoptique Electrical (Jason Sweeney) and the launch of his new release Let The Darkness At You. Performing once again with a combo of turntable and laptop, I was pleased with my performance aside from a couple of 'happy' accidents with vinyl slippage. Jason's set with projections was a testament to his outstanding reputation as a composer and performer. The fifty minute set was absolutely beautiful - by far the best electronic music performance I've seen this year. The EMU Space's perfect acoustics reinforced Jason's glacial and darkly atmospheric music, which coupled with slowly pulsating black and white images, gave the music a strong emotional weight. A very friendly receptive crowd made this one of my musical highlights for 08.

Thanks to Lauren for the lovely photos, there's more on my Flickr page here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7528804@N04/

I've posted some video excerpts from my performance here:

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

Now for a break from performing until November, and soaking up Germany in the meantime.

Upcoming live performance: 8th August 2008

I will be playing a set at the Felt Space on the 8th of August 2008. Jason Sweeney and Melbourne duo ii are also performing. The much vaunted turntable will make its first public appearance and I will be performing tracks from an upcoming mini-release Mimi.

More details to follow shortly.

EAF: ARTERIAL > TLR discovers his gut limit

I thought there was a smaller that usual crowd at the EAF for an opening. There was a good reason.

Thursday evening presented 'Arterial', a performance/installation work where the performers (senVoodoo) bleed from the wrist across a long strip of photographic paper. I lasted about three minutes. The sound of dripping and a horrid 'sticky foot' sound nearly made me pass out. I inspected the delicate blood patterns after the performers had left the space, feeling a little more at ease albeit with a twisted stomach and a desire to consume more wine.

An impressive work nontheless.

Performance for Earpoke: Glass with objects

The end-of-year EMU concert Earpoke (Jive, 22.11.07) is fast approaching at the tail end of this month so I have been busy trying to put together some kind of performance work. I had recently sworn to several people that I wasn't 'doing' performance at the moment, I've since changed my mind and by the benefit of hindsight I can see I was maybe being a little petulant and having one of my characteristic moody days.

The performance work in question will involve playing a sheet of glass with piezo speakers, the signal is then processed through Plogue and (cough) Garageband. In order to generate 'interesting' sounds the glass is covered with a fine mist of water and made squeaky with the application of fingers, whilst various objects (such as coins and stones) are used to produce clunks and twinkles. Seb Tomczak will be performing with me on the night I believe.

I'm thinking of calling it "Squeak, Clunk, Twinkle". Cute.

"Why on earth are you using Garageband?" > Well, I like the built-in slow sweeping filter effect, and since I don't have any fancy audio software and require an audio in driver for Plogue, I'm using Garageband's audio input and sending it to a Soundflower bidule.

"Oh, OK..."

[2.10.06] COMA Hipnote

On Monday night I performed two works at COMA's (Creative Original Music Adelaide) Hipnote concert series at the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Thebarton.

Translations(which I have performed at the Tyndall Assembly series twice) is a piece for an acoustic guitar where its strings are resonated sympathetically by sine wave frequencies. This creates contrasting timbres and beating patterns. Unfortunately, the piece suffered this time round due to the retro equipment I was forced to use since my laptop is still out of action. The lo-fi set-up comprised of a TASCAM tape desk, CD player and damaged loudspeaker.

Thankfully, the second work Two Bowls was realised more satisfyingly. A collage of contrasting sounds from tape (tones and noise) are played onto the bases of the bowls using piezo speakers, the bowls (which contain a shallow amount of water) are then tipped slowly to amplify the various harmonic nodes of each bowl. The shallow water is responsible for this - as the shifting water edge locates the nodal points on the bowl's surface, the rest of the bowl works as a sounding chamber of sorts. The water surface also works well as a primitive filter and is particularily good when playing tape hiss as well.

N.B:

Lo-fi music technology isn't such a bad thing - it depends on how you use it and how useful it can be for a given process. I'm actually a very strong advocate for endangered and extinct forms. In fact, last month I rescued around 60 reels of tape from the trash outside the Electronic Music Unit, unfortunately they're not blank (they contain French langauge lessons) but at least they've been spared a burial in a landfill faraway. I'm just another thoughtful conservationist in the soniferous garden. ;)

[21-24.9.06] Man In Chicago

Over the past couple of months I've been writing music for an experimental theatre work called Chicago Chicago, written by Australian John Romiril, directed by Peter Dunn, and performed by the second year acting students at AIT Tafe. The script was written in 1968, and is a satire on the American way of life - with all its foolish granduer, malevolence and decaying culture condensed in 20 disperate though inter-connected scenes.

A presidential candidate is the central character, and as the play unfolds he mentally unravels in his apartment where he is visited by a host of demented characters and a reccuring woman who takes on a series of guises. The subject matter of the play has numerous unnerving parallels with today's global culture of fear, and the actors performances are pushed to absurb extremes - but remain ultimately affecting.

My musical contribution could be best described as a quasi-jazz noise accompaniment - a series of musical themes (mostly acoustic) which introduced each scene with Ruth Buttery on vocals. During each scene I would either play understated jazz/blues motifs on my acoustic guitar, or treat my electric guitar with a socket wrench, bulldog clip, lap slide and my bare fists. The electric guitar wasn't so much played as guitar, rather as an industrial music box - using the webs of feedback and mauled strings to articulate the action on the stage.

Once I get get hold of a recording taken from the last and most chaotic performance on Saturday I'll post some excerpts for you to hear. In the meantime here are some photos I took: