Part 2
Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.
I think this would be pointless. Besides having pretty much the same thing for breakfast each day there is no such thing as a ‘typical day’ – it depends on where I am, what I’m working on and who it’s for. In fact, that is one of the appealing things about working this way – the diversity of places, people and situations I get to work with - from making field recordings in jungles, hospitals and clock workshops to setting up radio stations, performing live or giving talks and lectures in different cities around the world.
Though mostly it is much more mundane that that. The reality is that I spend the majority of my time sat in front of a computer.
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?
Okay - the piece I’ve chosen is the album ‘Magneto Mori: Vienna’ released as a CD on the Italian label Canti Magentici in 2019.
As well as more traditional soundscape compositions I began to explore ideas around audio archaeology and magnetic memory. This involved exploring a space not just through contemporary field recordings made over a short period during a brief visit, but also digging further into the past through the use of recordings I find in that location - usually on old reel to reel, cassette or Dictaphone tapes.
In particular I look for recordings of voices and places – home recordings of domestic situations, audio letters, answerphone messages and voice memos but sometimes also music. The idea is that through these recordings I can delve back into the sounds of the past of that place as well as its present. The compositions I create from this material are then a portrait of that particular place in both space and time. An extension of this process is a series of works I have titled ‘Magneto Mori’.
The process here involves making recordings of a particular location on a portable reel-to-reel recorder. Recorded one after another direct to tape, a sort of linear audio collage develops. Once the tape is full I cut the tape up into small pieces, dig a hole in the ground somewhere (in a public park, garden or school grounds for example) and bury the tape with a number of magnets. The magnets demagnetise parts of the tape they come into contact with and thus erase portions of the recording. The tape is left to steep in the earth of the location - in my imagination, absorbing and becoming one with the essence of the place. After a week or so the tape is dug up, the fragments of tape are washed, dried and then spliced back together in a random order.
This is a long and laborious process in which the remaining sounds are freed from their natural chronology and juxtaposed in an instantaneous new random collage. The distorted and degraded sound of the tape is part of the piece – the process fast forwards the effects of time on the physical material of the tape. Sometimes this is the finished piece – at other times I continue to make higher fidelity digital recordings of the same environment whilst the tape is buried and also look for old tapes at flea markets and car boot sales. Then all of this material is edited, manipulated and combined to create the final composition.
Again the idea is to mix the various times and histories of the found material, the burial tape and the more recent stereo field recordings – to blur the chronology of events, exaggerate the differences in fidelity and to attempt to get to some greater truth about the place by exploring the same location across time.
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?
I am keenly aware of the differences between solitary and communal listening. I regularly make works for radio where, although I’m producing a programme for a wide audience, I’m often addressing the listener as an individual. That is the power of radio - that a generic broadcast can feel like it is directed at you personally, that you are being spoken to as an individual. In this way radio is simultaneously both a communal and a solitary listening activity.
For many years I have run an open submission listening event with my friend Monica Brown. With a focus on creative uses of sound, radio and sound art ‘Lights Out Listening Group’ is a free listening event that takes place in complete darkness. Through this event in particular I have become very aware of the differences between listening alone and together.
In the dark you become very aware of the other people around you; fidgeting, coughing, creaking chairs – but also responses such as laughter, shock or surprise that are reinforced in a communal listening session. In many ways it’s the same difference as watching a film at home on the TV or seeing the same film in the cinema. There is an atmosphere and sense of community that evolves through experiencing something together at the same time that you don’t get watching something alone.
I love working alone and I also love collaborations. I don’t have a preference - both are important to me. The megalomaniac in me loves the complete autonomy of making every decision myself and not being answerable to anybody else. On the other hand, collaborating with others breaks me out of my regular working patterns, forces me to re-examine my own methods and hear things through other people’s ears. It necessitates compromise, which at times can be difficult, but also very rewarding. For each person in the partnership, being able to create something together that neither of you could have created alone is a joy. It can also feel less pressured when you devolve some of the responsibility to someone else.
I always learn a huge amount from working with other people. I am exposed to new ideas, new approaches and working methods that sometimes I will absorb into my own practice and as such the collaborative process is something I value highly.
How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?
My work relates to the world in the very real and direct sense that the materials I use are environmental sounds - the everyday, run of the mill sounds of daily life. I very rarely use any traditional musical instruments in my music. I am recomposing the world in each piece I make. I reimagine, manipulate and combine these sounds to create something new out of them. The real world is still partially recognisable within but distorted or altered in some way. I often re-pitch and retune things, imposing a musical form and order on these real world sounds.
In a sense when I compose I am forcing the world to conform to my will - but the decisions I make are also affected by the associations and attachments I have to these sounds. As I primarily use sounds I have recorded myself I am composing with my own memories and experiences. Even when they are barely identifiable to anyone else I am very aware of their source.
The role of music in society is too big a topic to cover here – and I don’t think there is any one answer to that question. Music means something different to each individual and each piece of music means something different to each individual who hears it. My best cover all response is that music is a form of communication, one that can sidestep language and obvious meaning and resonate with us more deeply on a personal, emotional, spiritual or intellectual level.
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?
Much of my work uses found tape recordings from old reel to reel tapes, Dictaphones and answering machines. The voices discovered on these tapes are windows on another world. They give insights into the lives of people who I will never know. They are real-life micro dramas that represent the whole breadth of human emotions. These discarded voices from the past often belong to people who are no longer with us. They are fragments of peoples' lives - people who once had families and friends, who experienced love and loss, happiness and sadness.
Listening to them makes me keenly aware of the passage of time and the rich tapestry of lives that are woven into the world. The musical elements and backdrops that underscore these voices are attempts to give these lost voices a home, to renew their significance, to preserve them in some way and to amplify the emotion and nostalgia contained within them.
There is one piece in particular that I found deeply affecting when I first heard it (and every time since) – Gavin Bryars’ ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ (the original version – not the later version version featuring Tom Waits).
The whole composition is based around a loop of an unknown homeless man singing a short musical phrase. Fading in from nothing the voice is gradually augmented harmonically by orchestral instruments until eventually it becomes accompanied by a full blown orchestra. It is a poignant, achingly sentimental, incredibly moving tribute to an unknown man living on the edges of society.
Sadly, as the story goes the man never heard the piece - and passed away before it was completed. In Bryars' own words – “although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism."
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?
As I’ve said before music for me is a form of communication – whether that be an idea or a feeling or something far more abstract. I think there are limits to what you can communicate with even a really great cup of coffee.
Whether it’s composing or performing, music is about connecting with a listener and communicating something that could not be expressed through words alone. It could be about the big things but it can also be about the mundane and the everyday. I actually find that more interesting most of the time.
Music doesn’t have to tackle all the problems of the world to have value or bring joy or comfort to someone. It’s okay to focus on the small things or even for it to just be entertainment.
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
Music is a language and like any other language it is able to transmit meaning. It is also full of ambiguity and open to personal interpretation.
Like all art, although the artist may have a specific intention, at the point it is released into the world the creator no longer has any control over how their work is read. It means something different to everyone, it can even mean something entirely different from one day to the next, depending on how you feel or what has happened to you that day. Its ambiguity is its strength, its meaning can stretch to accommodate the listeners needs and desires.
As a creator I am aware of how I am affected by the sounds I work with and the pieces I compose. In some way it’s necessary to make the assumption that some of this is universal; that if it makes me feel a particular way it will have a similar effect on other listeners - although I’m fully aware that that is not always the case.
I can only really use myself as the testing ground for how my work transmits a particular message, feeling or meaning. My own sensibilities act as my guide.
