Today’s episode features two tracks by collaborative songwriting group, Holy Island Sketchbook recorded over a long weekend in Rhoscolyn, Anglesey, North Wales. With no real agenda, but plenty of music gear, the following days and subsequent trips were a winding exploration of sound and music, from songwriting games to garden jams to deep listening and singing with sheep.
Following from last season’s exploration of underground sonic communities in this episode we enter a different kind of space with recordings collected at Hop Kingdom, London’s smallest indoor skatepark. With skateboards clattering, metal clanging and trains rumbling overhead, the soundscape emerges as a warm rhythm that captures the energy of the community. Produced by Ariella Fisher in collaboration with Rob Shuttleworth.
A year ago we gathered together in the Lamb pub in Bloomsbury to celebrate the outcomes of a Development Grant Programme that we ran over the previous six months. Our grantees were dove Christine Kirubi, George Lynch, Jak Skot and Miruna Fulgeanu, today’s episode includes readings of some of the works they developed during the programme. The programme aimed to support risk taking, to enable experimentation and allow for new poetic methodologies to develop across genres and media. We were able to run this programme thanks to grants from The Fenton Arts Trust and Arts Council England.
Today’s episode brings together recordings collected at a rehearsal of the Peckham Chamber Orchestra in October. Peckham Chamber Orchestra is a not-for-profit, non-hierarchical, mixed ability community orchestra based in Peckham in South London. This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.
Founded in 2013 by Hannah Catherine Jones and run collectively by its members, the orchestra plays music from a variety of different classical eras as well as pop arrangements and more experimental pieces. With an inclusive and sociable ethos, members come together to decide on the repertoire, highlighting composers historically under-represented in the classical world.
Today’s episode brings together recordings from the 158th instalment of Skronk, which took place last week at Endeavor in Deptford, South London. Skronk is a regular open mic event for improvising performers. It encourages experimentation and blurs the boundary between audience and stage. Guests can sign up on the night and they are thrown together in makeshift ensembles. Many of these have gone on to work together as fully formed bands.This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.
Skronk 158 was organised and hosted by Nathan Greywater. Full recordings with performer credits can be found on skronkimprov.bandcamp.com
Skronk takes place at Endeavor in Deptford every first and third Tuesday of the month. Follow @skronkstagram on Instagram or SKRONK: Live Experimental Music & Performance on Facebook for more information.
Today’s episode brings together recordings from the sixteenth instalment of SAOM, a monthly open mic event at Avalon Cafe in South Bermondsey which offers a space for artists and musicians to share their sonic experiments. The performers featured are Matthew Follis, Tony James Morton, JFS, Jung Latch, Technical Semantics, Henry Prince with Zeyn Mroueh and Kuro. The night was co-ordinated by Hannah Walton and Ariella Fisher with sound by Adrian Aldhini. This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.
Today’s episode takes us to a parcel delivery depot in a series of field recordings collected by Olly Jennings. The episode celebrates the launch of a new publication documenting a workshop series run by FIELDNOTES along the Thames estuary, investigating the tensions between human and non-human systems and landscapes, exploring experimental methods of creative composition, from writing to performing.
The publication brings together some of the exercises, prompts, responses and references that were shared and produced during the FLOOD programme. From this collection, we share the writing prompt titled DISTRIBUTION CENTRE:
The distribution centre is a terminal endpoint for architecture – the functionality of its features speak to a non-human or post-human genericism, its surfaces repel description. It is a nexus point for megalithic systems of dispersal and aggregation although the exact nature of its operations is often opaque.
Allow your imagination to enter into this inaccessible building. Create a character study of a human involved in the work of the distribution centre: how does a single story collide with a depersonalised network? Consider their habits, choices and temperament, what are the details that distinguish this individual? Think about how narrative is driven by the tension between difference and similarity.
Today’s episode celebrates the launch of our new print issue and features readings by the writer and artist Stephen Emmerson from his forthcoming book titled BIG SONG. BIG SONG is a prose poem, a hybrid text, a group of lyrical essays, a memoir, It is all of these things at once. BIG SONG is the beginning of an ever expanding documentary project. In describing this project Stephen says: I write about the past, but I do not write about events, I write about the shadows that those events cast. An extract from BIG SONG was published in the sixth print issue of FIELDNOTES which we launched last month.
Today’s episode documents a workshop run by FIELDNOTES on Two Tree Island in Essex with musician Rob Shuttleworth. The session was part of an ongoing workshop series titled FLOOD, which explores place-making poetics and sonic terrains across coastal and riverside spaces in the South East of England, investigating the tensions underlying shifting landscapes, intertidal zones, living systems and anonymised processes of de/composition. Participants in the workshop responded to prompts and the topography of the island by producing words, scores, instruments, compositions and performances.
We would like to thank our collaborators who attended the workshop: Will, Olivia, Flora, Jane, Peter, Suzie, Bhavini, Caroline, Liv, Tommaso, Raf, Jenna, Ben, Victoria, Dan, Ruairi, Anna, Zoe and Bea.
We are grateful to the Charles S French Charitable Trust who supported this workshop series with a grant and the Skinners Charity Foundation who funded the purchase of audio recording equipment for this radio series.
Photo: Zoe Rachel
The final episode of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode takes us to Warden Bay and the Leysdown Arcades on the Isle of Sheppey.
Voiced texts include extracts from Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban; Woodlands of Kent by Geoffrey Roberts; and chapters from Islanders authored by Fred Grimwade, Mary Holmes, Jenny Swoah and Brian Slade. Islanders is an anthology of collected stories of the people of Sheppey, it is the outcome of a project coordinated by Mike Dunstan and edited by John Firman.
The second episode of new season of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode starts in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey.
Voiced texts include extracts from: a letter written by Uwe Johnson to Hannah Arendt while the writer was living in Sheerness; Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; ‘Wreck, Rescue, Mutiny, Disaster, A shelf’, a found poem composed by John Hartley; and ‘TESCO’S’ by Fred Grimwade from the anthology Islanders, the collected stories of the people of Sheppey. Narratives from the island’s history were shared with us by Jenny Hurkett who founded and manages The Criterion, a heritage centre in Blue Town, Sheerness.
A new season of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode takes us from Gravesend to Shornemead Fort.
Including extracts from Due to a Death by Mary Kelley, Hogarth’s Great Grand Tour by Jenny Uglow, Little Estuaries by Daniel Kramb, Portrait of a River by Nikolai Bendix, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Liquid City by Iain Sinclair and Marc Atkins.
In the third episode of the series SONIC COMMONS, Fieldnotes’ James Hendrix Elsey is in conversation with artist and member of Shovel Dance Collective, Mataio Austin Dean. We hear about his research into folk songs ‘The Cutty Wren’ and ‘Bold Captain Avery’, plus a surprise accompaniment from Alasdair Roberts.
In the second session of our new series SONIC COMMONS, we are joined by Cecilia Morgan aka Cil aka afromerm. The South London born sound artist, composer, poet and producer takes us through a selected chronology of lesser known works from her archive, transporting us via field recordings from Tokyo to London, through bodies of water and auditory memories.
The first in a new series of FIELDNOTES broadcasts titled SONIC COMMONS, exploring the phonic substance that exists between things, shared commotions and resonances, collective and collaborative ways of making. This session focuses on the experiments in interspecies communications conducted by composer, conceptual artist and environmental activist Jim Nollman.
Jim Nollman is a composer, conceptual artist and environmental activist, who has been developing interspecies communication over the last 50 years. Using a variety of instruments, such as voice, cello, flute and electric guitar, as well as designing a ‘waterphone’ made of steel and bronze, and a floating drum, Nollman has improvised with a variety of land and sea animals. This session includes some of these strange and wonderful recordings alongside excerpts from Nollman’s notes.
Jim’s album Playing Music With Animals: The Interspecies Communication Of Jim Nollman With 300 Turkeys, 12 Wolves, 20 Orca Whales was released in 1982 on Folkway Records and can be purchased online here.
This session connects to the latest print issue of FIELDNOTES, titled ‘high variance’. Sound-pieces by Bear Kenchington and Lauren De Sá Naylor judder us into machining-oneiric states, we want to know: are you feeding the machine or is the machine feeding you?
In our eleventh session we are joined by multidisciplinary artist Trevor Mathison. Trevor was a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective and works across sound, composition and installation. We listen through his new release From Signal to Decay Vol. 5 and Trevor talks us through this iterative and ongoing project.
In our tenth session we are in conversation with the legendary artist filmmaker John Smith. In this interview he discusses some formative experiences and the ideas underpinning his singular body work.
In describing his work John says: ‘Nearly all of my work I tend to set up expectations which are not fulfilled, leading people down the garden path a bit. It’s very deliberate and I like that playfulness, not being sure where something is going, but also not being sure quite what it is you are actually looking at. I try and make work that isn’t immediately classifiable within a particular genre.’
Find John’s work in FIELDNOTES Issue 5.
In our ninth session we bring you a collection of reel to reel tape recordings by the filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait collaged from her archive by the artist Luke Fowler into a single spatial sound composition titled ‘Pomona’.
During her lifetime Margaret produced a pioneering body of work attending to simple commonplace subjects with a sense of inner rhythm and pattern lending the resulting ‘film poems’ a transcendental quality. She once said of her films that they are born ‘of sheer wonder and astonishment at how much can be seen in any place that you choose… if you really look.’
Find Margaret and Luke’s work in FIELDNOTES Issue 5.
In our eight session we bring together sonic experiences and material resonances from interstitial spaces. We travel between an underpass in South London to the 25 de Abril Bridge in Portugal. Including work by artists Rob Shuttleworth and Hannah Walton.
In our seventh session we are joined by the poet and musician Yan Jun presenting a dispatch from the experimental noise scene in Beijing. This movement against categorisation Yan describes as ‘Non Music’. Recordings include musicians Ake, Zhao Cong, Zhu Wenbo, Sun Yizhou, Kevin Corcoran, Zhao Ziyi and Yan Jun himself.
Yan Jun:
‘I always think music is not just music. It is reacted with other things, with our life and also the political or economic environment. So when someone asks me why this music starts, why this music exists, it’s a reflection of reality, it’s a low music for low life. Under certain kinds of oppression of course some people fight, but some people speak less, some people express themselves less. I think this is a kind of radical reaction in the form of Non Music in Beijing. If you asked me what is hardcore, I would say it is being boring’
Find Yan’s recordings and releases from his label Sub Jam on Bandcamp. Yan Jun’s poetry can be found in the second issue of Fieldnotes.
In this month’s broadcast we are in conversation with the poet and multidisciplinary artist Caroline Bergvall whose writings and projects explore material traces, literary documents, historical languages and hidden or forgotten knowledge. Caroline talks us through a few of her recordings including Refugio, Conference of the Birds and Nattsong.
All text and lead voice by Caroline Bergvall.
Refugio: sound design by Jamie Hamilton
Conference of the Birds: sound design by Dan Scott. Speakers include: Shadi Angelina Bazeghi, David Wallace, Geoff Sample, Clyde Ancarno, Cherry Smyth, Adam Chodzko and David Wallace as well as a Nightingale settled for the season at Stodmarsh.
Listen Heare: sound design by Jamie Hamilton, performed live at Turner Gallery Margate & streamed by Rivers Institute New Orleans.
Photo: C Bergvall, Nattsong, film Andy Delaney. Photo credit Issy Oakes.
In the first broadcast of a new season we are partnering with the venue Cafe Oto to bring you a recording from a live performance earlier this month. This listening session presents an open composition titled Blue Monday performed by the poet Zara Joan Miller and the musician Ute Kanngiesser. This dialogue between voice and cello responds to Zara’s poetry collection of the same name which maps four years of Blue Mondays, extracts from this series were published in Issue 1 of FIELDNOTES.
Photos by Sarah White
Recording by Rory Salter
Mix by Billy Steiger
In our fourth session we visit darkness and annihilation with a collection of recordings from contributors to the FIELDNOTES print publication. Including readings by the poet Peter Gizzi from his album Speech Acts For A Dying World; tracks from Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House an album composed by the writer, artist and musician Johanna Hedva; and a recording of CAConrad performing their poem ‘I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead’ from the collection ECODEVIANCE.
This session brings together a collection of works exploring embodied sounds. Including a live improvisation created by Jaka Škapin and Pavel Radu which provides a narrative of ‘compassionate listening’; a piece by Sohyun Han and Alvarx del Fresno titled ‘Saturated Touch’ which evolves around the idea of sound as touch; a recording by Funto Omojola presenting their medical records translated into Yoruba and performed on a Dundun drum; an extract of the project Estou sendo by Maíra Botelho which imagines the body as pre-verbal and indefinable; and ‘a remedy for the blues’, a collaborative work by Ruari Paterson-Achenbach and Sophie Marie Niang exploring an articulation of queer love and the act of being with each other.
In this session we present a collection of field recordings. These include the artist and film maker Frances Young, whose recordings form a soundtrack for a non-existent or imaginary film; the artist David Leal who draws from lived experiences of working in sex-shops, gay saunas and cruising parties to produce works that explore the porous nature of queer masculinities; and an improvised field recording of the song ‘La réalité’ by the musician and artist Thomas Dunoyer de Segonzac, part of a solo project titled ‘La banque de jeu de pharaon’, which Thomas describes as ‘half-way between sound poetry and noise’.
The pilot episode of a new series of radio broadcasts on Resonance 104.4FM. This session presents three artists working between translations and transitions, including the poet and artist Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, whose album REZO focuses on the sound of insect stridulation; a recording from the artist and writer Mónica Rivas Velásquez exploring ways of learning through encounters with Colombian plants belonging to the ecosystem el páramo; and an excerpt from the artist and musician Billy Steiger’s ongoing research into audio compression codecs for the transmission of sound over early internet connections.
In our first broadcast FIELDNOTES editor-at-large Joachim Hamou is in conversation with the artist Hanne Lippard, discussing her work between genres: the third space between text and images; performances and installations; poetry and biography.
Can a voice be legless?
Can a voice be useless?
Can a voice be senseless?
When is it essential to make sense?