final sound poetry release 2009 - small

As mentioned previously small is now available for free. Although it's not quite what I intended you can download the three tracks - exha, cli and dro - from my last fm artist page.

At 23 minutes small is one of the year's shorter releases. The techniques used were simple, a conscious return to the place where I started simply looping and layering sounds throughout the piece. In all of these though it's a single sound repeated. Part of the reason for this return to building up tracks in this way was spending so much time lately listening to Henri Chopin.

Please be aware that the third track dro is also relatively noisy compared to the other two.

See the 'cover' for December's release below.

I'll be back around December 29. Until then have a good holiday.

five for the top

As an alternative to Alan McGee's Hot Tips for 2010 in the Guardian here are my five essential acts for the new year:

Snuff Mash are out of the underground wax cylinder scene in Leicester centred on Dexter Flambe's SPEAKER/HANDSET club. After almost two years together their debut CD Kick My Balls Off hits the shelves in April.

Shit Faced Friday have been building a live reputation in Bristol for several months now. Alison Colophony's distorted vocals, sung through a guitar pick-up, are thick with impassioned disgust. Their record Lunng was due out this year, but the band split from label Unguent after the latter started to refer to them as SFF in all their press. The band had to go to court for the right to their own recordings. 2010 could be make or break.

One of the highlights of 2008 was the enigmatic dubstep smash Bellmouth from secretive collective Tree Dust, only half-jokingly referred to as nausea-step by Wire magazine. Quiet for much of 2009 they're back in February with an official release of elephantine dancefloor white-label Deleuze & Guattari.

The little-known German sub-genre Fairy Folk, melding queer sensibilities with traditional musics generally played on a laptop, has been generating interest in Liverpool recently. Leading the scene is producer/visual artist/academic Noah Teagarden who records as Tamlyn. Copies of a live sesson for pirate station Spark have been changing hands for upwards of £30. Expect new material and a tour later in the year.

Finally 80's revivalists Top Forty release a new version of Robert's Moustache ahead of their album Tango Now, apparently with much improved production and added handclaps, due in May.

aesthetics + the morality of authenticity

This is a bit of an exploratory post. A whole range of recent concerns seem to be crystalising into a theory I may try to explore further. It is something like this:

The idea of authenticity in art can be very fraught. Most famously in the last century Bob Dylan was attacked for selling out when he 'went electric'. What for Dylan may have been an aesthetic or practical decision, a new fascination, a return to an earlier love, or a combination of some or all of these, seemed to become for some fans a moral choice.

I can only speculate since I was only a small child toward the end of the folk revival but I suspect part of the appeal may have been similar to the attractions of noise now. That is that its roughness and weirdness compared to the smooth blandness of the mainstream made it appear unassimilable by that mainstream. I have to admit that this is at least part of the attraction of a lot of the art I like, from Derek Jarman through Henri Chopin.

But although there's clearly an aesthetic preference for something that is less familiar and harder to 'read' here there are also other factors at work. One of which is to take what might be read as an oppositional, or at least resistant, tendency in the work as a moral stance. To assume that because a featureless sameness is being resisted the artist has supposedly 'purer' moral concerns than a desire for success, financial reward, or even aesthetic curiosity and restlessness.

What started to bring these ideas together was the programme on Oliver Postgate that BBC Four showed yesterday. Now some of the connections are obvious - Postgate's socialism, the handmade nature of his films, a love of the countryside - but there was something more intangible. Now I don't suppose I've really begun to pin it down, but I think that intangibility lies somewhere outside of the form a piece of work takes (its aesthetic) and outside of its content. The content might well be moral, but has absolutely no need to be, and the aesthetic has no inherent morality of its own. But between them, intangibly, and where a lot of the perceived morality lies when the art is current, is the perceived intention.

The perceived intention may be made explicit by the artist or it may be presumed, especially where the content appears moral. Although of course that morality may primarily be there as a matter of aesthetic (or even pragmatic commercial) concern. But because the perceived morality is so intangible, may be primarily a shared impression of a relatively small group of artists and lovers of art, it is very personal to each individual. It is in a sense mainly in their head. That makes any perceived betrayal all the more painful.

That intangible perceived intention outside the aesthetic and the content of a piece of work appears to be an interesting area for exploration. You may hear more on this from me.

noise

Thanks to Richard Barrett for alerting me a few weeks ago to an upcoming conference at Salford University and Islington Mill on 1-3 July next year. It's called "Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures": Noise, Affect, Politics, and it's described as '[seeking] to address the contemporary phenomenon of noise in all its dimensions: cultural, political, territorial, philosophical, physiological, subversive and military, and as anomalous to sound, speech, musicality and information.' More details can be found here.

If you'd like to participate you can send submissions up to the end of February. Send a 400 word abstract and biographical note to Michael Goddard, m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk and Benjamin Halligan, b.halligan@salford.ac.uk. As well as conventional papers, noise, sound and video art proposals are also welcome.

I've been considering a submission myself and will probably work on ideas over the holiday period. But just in time to knock my confidence the latest print issue of Wire magazine reviews a forthcoming book from Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) to be published by MIT at £30 for the hardback.

It's called Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect And The Ecology Of Fear. Details from MIT here, and Goodman's blog of the book here.

small

Having spent a couple of hours recording material for December's CD-R a slight problem with the Mac Mini meant that all but two of the tracks got wiped. Today in work is likely to be foreshortened which means that the two other tracks that would have been used can be recreated. If that's the case then December's CD-R, small, should be available tonight.

Because it's christmas small will be available free of charge. There will only be a limited number of physical copies, but the tracks will also be available to download. More details including how to claim a physical copy later today.

After today santiago's dead wasp will take a short hiatus until just before new year. Basically I'm off to family in Lancaster well away from internet connections from tomorrow until Monday next week. The chances are there won't be much in the way of tweets over christmas either.

the more you know

After around four months or more determined to build a hydrophone (a microphone for use underwater) I finally completed one this weekend. The delay was not due to an enormously complicated build but more to my not being practically-minded enough to figure out a simpler build than the elegant but tricky one I'd tracked down online.

The build for which I'd bought components but which required quite precise work and inportantly a drill was more or less as follows:

Start with 2 hard plastic discs, 1 O-ring, 1 piezoelectric transducer, audio cable, epoxy glue, drill with a small bit, soldering iron and solder, and 4 screws.

1) Drill 4 holes round the outside of both plastic rings, ensuring that you will be able to align them.


2) Drill a hole in the centre of one of the plastic discs just big enough for the audio cable to pass through.

3) Solder the audio cable to the piezoelectric transducer as normal for manufacturing a contact mic. I was going to tell you to look it up yourself, but this link gives you the basic information. Normally though I'd buy the piezoelectric transducers separately. You can buy them sans plastic casing at a well known UK electronics store beginning with M, and probably elsewhere. I also find it more secure to remove the wires already attached and solder the audio cable directly to the piezo rather than splice together two wires. This is pretty much required with this build to make sure it's water tight, otherwise you have the piezo and the two wires to seal.

4) Place the O-ring in the centre of the other plastic disc and fix the underside of the piezoelectric transducer to that disc inside the O-ring.

5) Bring the two discs together with their holes aligned. With the screws tighten them enough that the O-ring forms a seal without being crushed.

6) Use the epoxy glue to fill in any space around the audio cable to prevent water getting inside.

It's neat but very fiddly and requires a lot of kit. To be honest I would probably never have managed to build this satisfactorily. I had all the parts and could have borrowed or bought a drill but just couldn't be bothered. Then a friend advised me on a much simpler build they'd been told about. After seriously botching the manufacture of a simple contact mic I had to wait a few days to get hold of some new piezoelectric transducers before I could have another go. Finally on the weekend I managed to successfully complete my first hydrophone.

In full that much simpler build is:

Start with a lid (jam jar, coffee jar - I used a plastic milk bottle lid although it may be a bit too soft to be ideal), make sure it's large enough to accommodate the piezoelectric transducer, 1 piezoelectric transducer, audio cable, epoxy glue, epoxy resin, soldering iron and solder.

1) Solder the audio cable to the piezoelectric transducer as before. As if making a contact mic. Which is what you're doing.

2) With the epoxy glue fix the piezoelectric transducer in the lid. If your soldering is as crappy as mine you might need to cut a gap in the side of the lid to allow the cable to pass through to avoid inadvertantly pulling it off the piezo.

3) If you like you can put epoxy glue over the back of the piezoelectric transducer. Then fill in the lid with epoxy resin. Be aware it's a potential sensitizer so you'd be well advised to wear a pair of gloves to work it.

4) To be sure there are no problems leave the epoxy to cure as per the instructions. When 24 hours or however long have elapsed you should have a basic functional hydrophone.

It's pretty ugly but it does the job and should take at most 15 minutes to build. Job done. You'll probably hear some recordings from my hydrophone in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to make another soon because I'm pretty sure this first one won't last very long.

late night live art at kraak 3

Thursday night was the final in the current series of Late Night Live Art at Kraak. This has been a really interesting set of events and there will be more in 2010. The attendance was less than last week but there were still around ten people. Some of the advertised performers weren't able to be there but with three performances and an installation the night was still pretty full. The majority of pieces also used techniques that hadn't been seen at the previous events. A thematic unity emerged through some of the pieces with ideas of memory and erasure and transformation of the everyday.

The first performance and most easily overlooked lasted through the evening. David Hancock partially erased headlines from the days newspapers and the stuck them to the wall. He was in a corner close to the entrance separate from the main space. Performatively I was struck by several elements of David's work. The most obvious aspect was the rocking of the table as he erased the headlines. This was also punctuated by brushing crumbs of eraser off the paper and table. Then there were the occasional sounds of sellotape when a headline was stuck up. More visually his concentration and neat arrangement of his small table, with stack of newspapers on one side and pencils or charcoals and large number of erasers on the other side. There was also a small collection of screwed up bits of paper cut from round each headline on the floor. The faint but still readable headlines with sections of story and photos also partially erased were stuck on a wall to David's right. Whether accidentally or intentionally there was something of the filmic office - especially newspaper office - in the visual arrangement of desk and headlines. Perhaps encouraged by the way the space looks.

For me the performance had inevitable echoes of the only other performance of David's I'd seen with Yingmei Duan at Chinese Arts Centre. Whether erasure is normally a part of David's aesthetic I don't know, but it featured in both the performances. But whereas in Dreams he first created the images and then partially erased them in echo of the way dreams fade when we wake, in this piece the images were already existing. For many of the audience they were headlines we'd seen throughout the day even if we hadn't bought the papers. The focus on transience and erasure here was different, potentially more political. Although if we take Yingmei's dreams at face value there were still decisions made about what dreams to feature, how to tell them, and which images to pull out, the decisions here were very different. Decisions are made about what's newsworthy, what prominence it should be given, how it should be covered - the tone, the headline that should be provided etc. News is also prone to amnesia - what's important today can be forgotten tomorrow, positions on particular stories can change from day to day. In a sense the headlines erase themselves day by day while remaining much the same. But sometimes they can be contentious - I believe the Sun's recent celebration of its own headlines finds no room for the still offensive response to the Hillsborough disaster.

In a sense David was engaged in simultaneously reviving and erasing headlines that were already dying. The recognition and amusement derived from recognition of headlines previously seen and almost forgotten made the distance from them seem even greater. This was a piece hard to find anything so simple as a single meaning or obvious reference points in but which was still memorable.

Louise Woodcock's installation in the larger of the spaces attached to the main space was haunting in a different and much more disquieting way. The components were every bit as simple as David's and on the face of it not disturbing in themselves. A large crocheted 'biomorphic form' hung in one part of the room while a tape played. The large form which might have been an internal organ or placenta with long trailing umbilicus was clearly crocheted and oversize, but looked entirely plausible as a biomorphic form. It hung from a meat hook attached to a chain slung over the metal sprinkler system creating a real Silent Hill/Jacob's Ladder atmosphere by very simple means. This was reinforced by the tape which played a loop of a baby making sounds but pitchshifted down significantly. Since the sound was sometimes quiet and sometimes loud and since there was a lot of silence it was not something you could easily get used to.

As Lou said it was probably something best experienced in small groups. I suspect also that the piece is something experienced differently by women than by men. Women's bodies have traditionally been, and remain, a contentious personal, political and religious battleground. They have been the site of fear for men, especially where they have chosen to encode notions of morality and control in the body, specifically the reproductive body. Culturally it seems as if a woman's body is still not seen as hers and as if any decision she makes about it is seen as having a moral and political import. Add this to the physical changes women undertake at puberty - far greater than those experienced by men - and the fact that it's women who undergo childbirth - then the near body-horror of Lou's piece has a far greater individual and personal significance for women.

Then there is the double effect of the skill required to create what is in fact a quite beautiful object but which is then presented in a disturbing way. And the curious loneliness of the piece isolated in a large white room with periodic mournful cries emerging. Thematically it doesn't seem that far removed from Lou's previous performance eating words. And both I think are pieces that could easily be repeated in other spaces. It is however really an installation that you need to experience rather than read about or even look at photos of.

Graham Dunning and Gary Fisher collaborated on an improvised sound piece. Graham mainly used decks with modified records - different records stuck together, records with tape across, 'records' apparently made from unconventional materials. Gary used mainly tapes, tape loops and amplified objects with delay pedal. Once again and even more than previously it was sometimes hard to differentiate between who was creating which sound. Sometimes it was obvious, the rhythmic thunk of needle passing over tape on a record, or the delayed sounds of a cymbal with contact mic attached being stuck.

Gary seemed to be a little more prominent than he has in some of the previous performances I've seen, while Graham was more obviously engaging in performance than I'd noticed before at similar events. Again it wasn't wholly serious with some funny moments such as when even Gary seemed surprised by a sound on tape that sounded like Chewbacca. Another was closer to the end when Graham added tape to a record already playing, initially causing it slow down and then catching the needle on the tape.

Graham's practice in these collaborations does - as I've probably noted before - seem to be about the materiality of sound reproduction. The techniques used and how they can be subverted or used in other ways. For instance he dropped marbles one by one onto a record at intervals until the were sometimes pushing the playing arm out of the way and once or twice forced it upward to pass underneath. Gary's practice is similar but with less emphasis on the methods of reproduction and more on sounds of objects not normally used for music. Their collaborations exist in an interesting space where sound art, music and performance join together.

Finally Helen Shanahan (with minimal sound accompaniment from Gary on amplified Kalimba) did a live performance with a film of Dungeness. The film was projected from the front onto a suspended sheet. Behind the sheet Helen then painted over the image with ink.

There were several interesting aspects to this. First and most obviously the lines only bled through slowly. So you could see from a disturbance of the sheet where marks were being made but not the marks themselves. Then the line would become faintly visible almost more like a flaw in the film than a mark on the sheet. But it would gradually darken and start to obscure the projected image.

As the lines appeared and increased I found myself doing two things simultaneously. At once attempting to watch the film and ignore the intrusion into the image while also seeing whether the lines could be resolved into some kind of image of their own. But after a while that became unsustainable and the lines and film had similar weight and began to interact in different ways. The lines almost formed a cage inside which the film happened. But more strikingly they obscured so much of the image that it wasn't possible to look at the smaller details. Instead you began to focus on the composition of the images, which then drew attention to the edits. And the further the performance progressed the more the ink lines began to coincide with outlines in the film. It was almost as if the two elements had began to co-ordinate. And this in a sense almost contradicted the general import of the performance.

The film records a home and a place that after generations of family presence will soon be sold. The film is a way of holding on to some part of that, of concretising memory, and the performance enacted the loss and erasure of place and family ties. The shift from belonging to being an inadvertent tourist. Having already seen the film this performance heightened the parallels with Ivan Civic's Return to Sarajevo... after ten years... which I saw at Marina Abramovic Presents in the Whitworth Gallery during the summer. In that piece Civic reinserted himself in footage shot on returning to Sarajevo after ten years away by climbing with a projection of the film. Helen's performance was poignant in a different way but equally affecting.

If Helen repeats the performance or shows the film in another form I'll let you know, it's very much recommended.

And that, unfortunately is that for the time being. More in 2010. Be there or suffer the potential future opprobrium of your grandchildren.

papers from journal of british + irish innovative poetry launch

If you haven't yet decide whether to subscribe/ask your library to get a copy of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. Or if you have misgivings about such a project. Or if you're just curious. Or if you've read the first issue already and think it's a great thing then it's worth following the next link.

Just published is a 34-page free online collection of three papers from the Birkbeck launch of the journal and photos from the event. It's introduced by Robert Sheppard and there are fascinating papers by Andrea Brady, Caroline Bergvall, and Robert Hampson. I was especially interested in Andrea and Caroline's papers as they directly addressed some of the questions and concerns I had.

I wouldn't say that it's a taster of the journal, but it will give you some idea of what it covers, to an extent what some of the writing will be like, and may help you decide if you want to buy or borrow a copy. And it's free, so go read and enjoy.

next late night live art at kraak

A really packed and interesting programme this Thursday for Late Night Live Art at Kraak 3 this Thursday (that's tomorrow, 17 December). It includes David Hancock who's recent collaboration, Dreams with Yingmei Duan at Chinese Arts Centre was recently reviewed here. My friend Helen will also be performing, painting live over a projection of a film she's made about Dungeness.

As usual I think the doors open 10-11pm, it's £2 in, and the event will carry on to around 1am. I think it really is worth attending and if you're able I'd recommend you do.

Kraak now also has a website beginning to take place here. In their own words tomorrow will see:

Artist David Hancock performing live drawing, artist/filmmaker Helen Shanahan painting onto her own film about Dungeness as it plays. There will be improvised music and sound with artists Danny Saul, sound artists Graham Dunning and Gary Fisher performing in collaboration with tape loops, modified record players and other objects, and David Fox as I Lucifer reacting sonically to films by Pasolini and Jarman. There will be an installation by Louise Woodcock in the side room consisting of a large crochet object and sound.

David Hancock graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1996. Mostly specialising in painting, he has been included in several group shows including John Moores 21 Painting Prize, BP Portrait Prize, Young Masters curated by Flora Fairburn, i-POD Killed the Video Star at Showroomama, Rotterdam curated by Ken Pratt, The Future Can Wait, curated by Ellis & Rumley and the New London School at Mark Moore, LA. He has also had a number of solo shows both nationally and internationally including the Agency in London, Galerie Transit in Belgium, The Storey Gallery in Lancaster and The City Gallery in Leicester. He has also been artist in residence at the Walker, Liverpool and 501 Artspace, Chongqing China. This will be David's second Live Art performance after collaborating with Yingmei Duan during her Breathe Residency at Chinese Arts Centre. In this weeks performance, David will rub out the headlines of a newspaper questioning the transitory nature of the press.

Helen Shanahan is an artist who works in various media. her main emphasis is on moving image, creating a mixture of narrative cinema and video art . Helen’s work explores the complexities and ambiguities of intimate relationships and often centres around interchangeable themes of body and home. For her performance, Helen will be drawing over one of her films, gradually obscuring the image over time. The film focuses on the artist’s personal sense of loss as her grandparents prepare to leave their remote village home of fifty years.

Louise Woodcock works mainly in installation and performance using objects, sound and light to create intense atmospheres. The work deals with fear and horror and how these are psychologically associated with the body, especially the female body. The work questions the role of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in our collective cultural, moral and psychological make up. The work raises questions about femininity and masculinity, beauty and disgust, the synthetic and the organic. This week, Louise will exhibit an installation consisting of a giant biomorphic crochet object and the ambiguous sounds of cries.

Danny Saul is a Manchester based experimental songwriter. He also performs with Greg Haines as Liondialer. Danny will be making an improvisation with something that makes sound, like an instrument perhaps, or some instruments... or possibly something that isn't an instrument or instruments. It will become more apparent what he's doing when he does it.”…

Graham Dunning is a sound and visual artist who uses modified electronic equipment and found objects. Found home recordings from the distant past feature heavily in the work investigating memory, childhood and nostalgia. Graham’s recordings and performances involve layering and delay units that distort and upset the sound as well as making it ambient. The work features field recordings pressed onto vinyl dubplates which are manipulated using modified turntables and delays, raising questions about the role of vinyl in contemporary music.

Gary Fisher is a sound and visual artist working within a continuous process of experimentation and inquiry focused around investigatory or instinctive responses to sounds, objects, words, places, people and images. This process includes collecting and archiving information, research and objects, drawing, construction, photography, text and sound recording. It generates many outcomes including live performance, sound installation, CD or tape recordings, graphic scores, writings and drawings

David Fox will be performing as I Lucifer. David has recently been performing with fellow sonic art-terrorists Kylie Minoise and Smear Campaign as well as touring Europe as part of his Excursions project consisting of 8 live actions and or field recordings in 8 Cities including Berlin, Prague, Zurich and Milan. David will also be releasing his first album under the I Lucifer ident, entitled 69 Hate Songs, in January 2010. The I Lucifer performance will include a semi-improvised work taking sonic cues from Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo and Derek Jarman's Last of England using such instrumentation as a KaosPad, two self-made soundboards and a Bosch Power-drill.

If you would like to perform, try out an installation or would like more information email spacekraak@googlemail.com or call Louise on 07958 050 730

I'll be in the audience and I'll review the event here as usual. Although I'll continue to promote stuff here you can also find out about forthcoming events at their website, and on some listings like The Art Guide.

found - penultimate poem in manchester sequence

Somehow this sequence has got more dislocated and started to make less sense as it progresses. This poem, found, is the last of the prose poems (of twenty-seven, arranged in groups of nine) with only a final section summarising some themes so far to follow. That summarisiing section like pomona strand and low sun will be based on an accentual line of three stresses and will probably be around three pages in total.

found

direct late afternoon light on the side of a tower block clad in red brick. parcel to collect. a projection and simplification. orange and mango juice. record around three minutes of the sound of warehouse and loading bays being dismantled. walk as far as barton bridge before heading back towards town. see following page. short dark video clip of sound performance. relaxed atmosphere. rehearsal studios in ancoats. light rain. stand on middle railing to lean over water to take a photo. cooked rice with tumeric thrown under a tree for pigeons. found unused bullet from second world war in garden. part of towpath slippery in rain. deflated cartoon ghost helium balloon in canal at the water's edge. a number of car tyres sinking in mud. swan climbing out onto bank. sides of steps painted red. small sounds greatly amplified. misread 'dunican's bar' as 'duncan's bar'. pass territorial army base. paper jammed in fax machine. 'turn snib to open'. contemplating an illegal 1.4GB download of sound poetry. lambs gathered on square of slate in centre of field. left leg cramps painfully. low flying aircraft. limes. venetian blind no longer works properly. dog shakes chew toy. ordsall. sound of microphone dragged across stone.

henri chopin

With Saturday night bringing useless light entertainment spewing into your front room here's something to make the Robbie Williams fans hide behind the sofa crying.

The author of this blog had only just stumbled across sound poetry when Henri Chopin died at the start of 2008. So his loss wasn't properly appreciated at the time - which means giving credit for being such a fantastic artist is way overdue.

Almost inevitably UbuWeb has probably the most comprehensive collection of audio and video of Chopin at work. There's also his statement on Why I am the Author of Sound Poetry and Free Poetry. The film presented in partnership with Erratum.

For those of you too lazy to click links here's something from 2005. It's both on UbuWeb and on YouTube - although on the latter you will have to put up with the dumbass comments underneath.

Now I feel better. Fucking family entertainment. Fucking celebrities. Yeah that's right - we're fucking coming for you.

kraak photos

Having finally figured out how to transfer photos and video from my camera to my Mac here's a selection of images from the last two Late Night Live Art at Kraak events.

A view of a seating area in the main space

View from the main space to the entrance - just out of view to the right of that pillar

View from the smaller of the attached exhibition spaces

3 December - Gary and Graham's performance

3 December - Gary and Graham's performance

3 December - my installation

3 December - Lou's set up

3 December - Lou's performance

3 December - Lou's performance

10 December - Graham's record smashing installation

10 December - Graham's record smashing installation

10 December - Gary's performance

10 December - Gary's performance

10 December - Gary's performance

audio from late night live art at kraak 2

This is audio of my performance from Late Night Live Art at Kraak 2 from Thursday this week - 10 December.

The messy opening has been cut off but you don't actually miss anything important. There is some ambient noise from the space but most of what you hear is from my field recordings, with a little feedback bleeding through in places.

My voice doesn't feature at all in the piece - more sound art than sound poetry. It's a little over 17 minutes long.

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late night live art at kraak 2

Ooh look, it's my 750th post here.

Enough backslapping, yesterday was second in the first series of three Late Night Live Art at Kraak events. The line-up of performers was the same but most of the performances were different.

The number of people attending was different too. Last week one person turned up. This week I'm told around twenty people came. This seems to have been because the event was on more lists this time.

Graham Dunning used the larger of the two rooms off the main space for a pair of installation pieces:

The first consisted of a work bench, hammer, and set of 12" vinyl records. The object was simply to smash the records. It proved very popular, and really unleashed some aggression in people. Although in a harmless kind of a way - a bit like the Lightning Bolt gig really. The sound of it was surprisingly loud. And of course now the broken bits of record can be used for another piece of work.

The second was quite a lot more disquieting and people were more wary of it. But at the same time it was funny to use. A microphone was set up in a corner of the room. Next to the mic was a table with a couple of children's books and a set of headphones. You put the headphones on and read from one of the books. Except it wasn't quite that simple. A delay was introduced in the signal meaning you heard your words a fraction of a second late. Enough at least for there to be a noticable gap between you speaking the word and hearing it fed through to you. Readers found themselves slowing down and reading in really exaggerated ways. The experience was like the aftermath of a heavy blow to the head. You felt slow confused and thrown off balance.

What I also found was that the delay was just small enough that you could adjust to it. After the initial confusion you found your brain would for a short period take account of the delay and it was possible to read out loud but delay your expectation of the auditory signal so that it felt normal. But you then became aware of this illusory effect of synchronisation of speaking and hearing and lost track of where you were again.

The installations were recorded and I'd imagine will see the light of day at some point. The readings are especially suited to listening back again. Although perhaps they'd be best placed as accompanying items with a repeat of the same installation. And it is something that's amendable to repetition. Especially as texts that are challenging in a range of different ways could be used.

I was first of the performers on the night. It started by playing out a recording taken in Manchester city centre on cassette at the weekend and looping a section via my pedal. Next I added in one of the considerably less noisy digital recordings taken a couple of weeks ago. This featured various buskers passed on the way through town - notably a violinist at the beginning. This recording was left to play for around six minutes. Various short snippets mainly from microcassette recorder but also from mobile phone were introduced - some of them looped. In both cases a microphone had to be held against the speaker to pick up the sound.

Gradually the sound thickened and got louder. The digital recording was changed and two tracks were allowed to play out that were taken some time ago. One was a recording walking along the canal towards Deansgate Locks, the other walking to my flat along the road. There were some nice wind noises on both and some of that got looped. In the meantime the cassette had stopped and had to be restarted. The microcassette was turned over in order to play some of the conversation audible on that side. The overall sound was quite a dense pulsating roar by now. I attempted to loop in the sound of the handbuilt mic being scraped on the floor but it didn't make a lot of noise.

The microcassette got turned back over to the street sounds without conversation and the digital player changed to a similar recording taken around town. The loops were cut and the volume turned up on the three live inputs - cassette, microcassette held against mic, and digital recording. The microcassette was first to have its volume reduced until it was taken out of the mix. The digital player was returned to the first recording used and its volume was dropped as the violin receded. That only left the slightly distorted and hissy input from the cassette to play on for a little before also being faded out ending the performance. In all I think it took about 25 minutes. It was recorded on my Zoom but I haven't had a chance to listen back yet. The performance seemed to be pretty well received though.

Gary Fisher was next. He'd attached a number of contact mics to a coat. The wires from the mics ran through a loop pedal and mixer to a mini PA. This meant that while the piece was essentially a physical performance Gary was more or less fixed to a relatively small area.

He rubbed and tapped the coat, put items in pockets and took them out again. He stuck gaffer tape to his coat and pulled it off. He used sandpaper against the coat. At times there was a lot of sound punctuated by moments when it dropped right down to the smallest gestures. The physical impression of the performance was, as someone said, like someone fidgeting in a bus queue. Only with hysterically amplified sound. There are huge possibilities for applying this to other situations, other items of clothing, for filming such a performance. Later on Gary also talked about building more into the coat to allow him to manipulate the sound. Which seems to be edging towards Kraftwerk's 1970's claim that soon they would get rid of instruments on stage and just play their lapels.

To close the performance Gary unzipped his coat and he was done. Just over six minutes from memory. Again audio was recorded and some snippets of film along with several photos. I think some of this will be available from the Kraak site at some point. In the way that Graham's installation with the delay on the voice made you appreciate the complexity and fragility of something as everyday and invisible as simply talking - and perhaps gave a tiny insight into the frustrations of seriously disordered speech - Gary's piece made you refocus on the tiny unconsidered sounds of your own clothing and body usually easily ignored.

After a short gap Louise Woodcock reprised her piece from last week with some modifications. Some adjustment was made to the set up of the table and the colours Lou wore to more closely reflect historical representations of the Last Supper. The angle of the camera was changed so that more of the plate was visible on the back projection. A slightly different selection of books were used. A smaller edition of the Bible, a large format girl's illustrated storybook from mid-twentieth century England, and a paperback of Camus' The Outsider [You may also know it as L'Etranger or The Stranger].

Leviticus featured heavily again, with its obssessional fear of women's bodies and emphasis on 'cleanliness' that seems more moralist than physical. The girl's stories tend to concentrate on friendship, duty and how to be 'good'. The Camus I can't comment on having never read it, I don't enjoy his work and have a suspicion of him generally. Again the performance was very well sustained. Given its duration - and the duration is very much an aspect of the piece - the performance element will have been more challenging to carry out than Gary's. From past experience where physical action is involved it can be difficult to sustain your attention and actually execute actions convincingly, or at least avoid movements lacking in energy and interest. But Lou sustained her concentration throughout.

The performance was very well received, and again an audio document made of the performance, although that will be a wholly different piece of work. I'm not sure if any filming was done but I know some photos were taken. It was also a really good reflective piece to finish on having worked through the louder performances including the hands-on fun of Graham's installations.

If you've been thinking about it but haven't come along yet then please come next week, Thursday 17 December. Doors 10-11pm, event to 1am. £2 donation on the door. From memory Graham and Gary will be working together on something, Lou I think is performing, and Helen Shanahan will do a piece. I think Danny Saul should be performing on the night too. I'll be there in the audience barring accidents. More details about the night when they're available. Although next week will be the last in this series the intention is to take a month off, have another three or four nights, take another three or four weeks break, and so on. So if you miss it there will be more events. But on the other hand if you miss it you'll miss something that won't be repeated.

As with last week photos will be uploaded once I manage to get the technology to play ball. However it seems like my new phone (LG Cookie) can't sync with my Mac. Although I could save sounds etc. to a micro SD I have nothing else that will read it. The other options (such as Blogger Mobile) I haven't been able to get working. For instance I can't currently even send a message to Blogger to register with the mobile service. But I'll send the audio recorded to my Zoom to the artists in question once I get the chance, and probably post my set here in the next week.

tonight at kraak

Today. Back at Kraak. I have field recordings of walking round town - voices, music, alarms, traffic and shit. On digital recorder, cassette, microcassette and mobile phone. I'm also taking a mixing desk, loop pedal, semi-directional mic for the stuff I can't plug straight in the desk, and hand-built mic for miscellaneous bangs and distorted vocals if I feel like it. I have kind of an idea what I'm going to do - but like not really. Footsteps, ambient sounds, wind noises, layering and all that shit. Should be fun.

I'll let Kraak describe what else is on:

Late Night Live Art at Kraak featuring artists: Gary Fisher, Matt Dalby, Louise Woodcock, Graham Dunning. Gary will be performing with an amplified coat, Graham will have two installations, Louise will be eating words, Matt will be performing with field recordings from around the city.

LNLAK events are intended to encourage collaboration, discussion and experimentation. There is a core of performers each week with an opportunity for others to get involved either on the night or at future events. If you would like to perform, try out an installation or would like more information email spacekraak@googlemail.com or call Louise on 07958 050 730.

Louise Woodcock works mainly in installation and performance using objects, sound and light to create intense atmospheres. The work deals with fear and horror and how these are psychologically associated with the body, especially the female body. The work questions the role of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, in our collective cultural, moral and psychological make up. The work raises questions about femininity and masculinity, beauty and disgust, the synthetic and the organic. This week, Louise's performance involves eating words from a selection of books. There will be a dining table set with cutlery and plates. Pages are torn from books and cut with a knife and fork, the detail on the dinner plate can be seen projected on a screen behind the artist.

Graham Dunning is a sound and visual artist who uses modified electronic equipment and found objects. Found home recordings from the distant past feature heavily in the work investigating memory, childhood and nostalgia. Graham’s recordings and performances involve layering and delay units that distort and upset the sound as well as making it ambient. The work features field recordings pressed onto vinyl dubplates which are manipulated using modified turntables and delays, raising questions about the role of vinyl in contemporary music. This week, Graham will show two interactive installations. The first installation consists of a workbench and a hammer, which the audience is invited to use to smash up a pile of vinyl records. The second installation consists of a microphone on a stand with a pair of headphones. Participants can speak into the microphone or read from texts selected by the author. A delay unit placed in the audio path causes the speaker to hear their voice fractionally later than would be usual.

Gary Fisher is a sound and visual artist working within a continuous process of experimentation and inquiry focused around investigatory or instinctive responses to sounds, objects, words, places, people and images. This process includes collecting and archiving information, research and objects, drawing, construction, photography, text and sound recording. It generates many outcomes including live performance, sound installation, CD or tape recordings, graphic scores, writings and drawings. At this weeks’ live art event, Gary will perform wearing a coat with amplified pockets, playing with objects inside in an exploration of texture and sound.

Matt Dalby is a poet who has moved into sound and visual poetry in the last two years with a particular concern for performance. At the last LNLAK Matt created an interactive installation which depended on the viewers location in the room to stop and start feedback.

What better way to spend the last few hours of Thursday? Doors open from 10-11pm, I think tonight may only go on to midnight, but it could stretch past that. It's going to be fucking cool, I promise.

lightning bolt at islington mill

Yesterday. Back at Islington Mill for Lightning Bolt. Two support acts. Pocketknife up first. They were a bit monochrome and would have been more impressive if it was 23 years ago and you hadn't heard Pixies or Babes In Toyland. Next was probably Tweak Bird although I'm not 100% on that. Hey, I don't need to be. They were better with flute and sax adding texture to a much bouncier rhythm and one of the silliest drum set-ups I've ever seen. Seat quite low, one cymbal way above head height, gong to the side.

I like it when bands don't fuck about. So Tuesday although they have a big set-up the crew for Sunn 0))) do last minute fannying about while people are coming in and through B J Nilsen's set so they can start straight off. Yesterday as Tweak Bird (or whoever, what am I, Pitchfork?) were starting to dismantle their kit Lightning Bolt were plugging in and switching on. Obviously it was more or less set up and in place already. Imagine... well almost any other band setting up their kit and leaving it at the side of a venue where anyone might trip over it.

And then they kicked off. Two people. Bass, drums and heavily distorted vocals. And yet way more colourful than either of the two bands preceding. Absolute melee on the three sides open to the room. Plenty of old favourites like Dracula Mountain. Hot as anything. Not as loud as Sunn 0))) but don't need to be when you're up close and personal like that. Encored but Brian Gibson's pedals had got fucked up or something so it kind of fell apart twice before they had to quit. Some attempts at crowd surfing but not quite enough people and impossible to get put down at the front so that was kind of patchy. Totally different kind of energy to the day before.

If you don't know what they're like check out Wonderful Rainbow and Hypermagic Mountain for starters. Ideally played out through chest-freezer size speakers on a busy commuter train. Trust me, even the longest journey will seem way too short.

sunn 0))) at islington mill

Sunn 0))) were great - and extremely loud - yesterday. Rather like how I imagine standing in a jet engine might feel.

Even queueing outside Islington Mill during some last minute sound checks you could feel the walls and pavement shaking. I was glad I took along my own good quality earplugs - although foam earplugs were available. Even so I'm still experiencing what I guess is a kind of low-level tinnitus of throbbing bass that also affects some external bass frequencies. When Sunn 0))) were playing you could feel your clothes, your throat, the floor shaking.

B J Nilsen opening didn't play from the stage but from close to the bar. He produced sounds of a storm which for me didn't really do enough to maintain attention for long. They rumbled on and there were occasional outbursts of noise, but on the whole I didn't find it very varied. That may be because I wasn't really paying much attention. I'd definitely like to hear more on record, or live in another context. Personally I woud have thought having a captive audience was a great opportunity to throw in a lot of really weird sounds and disorient people.

Not having seen Sunn 0))) before my expectations were probably more Anglo-centric than they should have been. The wearing of hoods and heavy use of dry ice misled me into expecting a European or more precisely British hauteur and cool. And of course when they came on they were hooded and you couldn't see the stage for dry ice from two metres away. But there was no stiff British attempt at remaining distant and cool. This is music well aware of how absurd it is while at the same time being absolutely sincere. It's a tricky but necessary balance to pull off.

Along with Steven O'Malley and Greg Anderson were Attila Csihar on vocals - with what sounded like ring modulator and delay pedal applied separately at different times, and Stebmo (Steve Moore) back after his visit earlier in the year with Earth - on trombone and miscellaneous electronics.

The sound throbbed and roared, there were jazz/improv touches, scratchy and abstract clusters of notes, reversed vocals, moments when voice merged with electronics and a constant pressure of sound - which seemed to help with my sciatica. Attila changed partway through from his hooded coak to an affair that was part tree. Utterly preposterous in a good way.

Clearly this is a wholly different experience from listening at home - unless you have stacks of fucking huge speakers about the place and really tolerant neighbours. It's truly immersive. And on the subject of volume I'm looking forward to Lightning Bolt tonight. Having already seen Earth this year the performer I'd really love to see now is Keiji Haino.

pastoral - new poem from manchester sequence

Not the most recently completed poem from the manchester sequence but new nonetheless.

pastoral

succession of market falls. tree interrupts ring of fungus. section of road subsided. electric overhead travelling crane. and to obtain some good value christmas presents. bright colours through raindrop on mobile screen while texting. oblique. merchandise stalls on roads around football stadium. the gas tank is in a casing lined with insulation material that separates it from the hot boxes. attempted delivery. latest date of next examination. written evidence to parliamentary scitech committee on homeopathy. we have to suffer at some time - we are in the grips of obese our teeth are mottled and being elderly is an added nuisance. granulated sweetener in pink paper packets with design of text and wavy music stave straight out of an old fashioned christmas cracker. single flower at the top of a two metre rose. half a bird’s wing on the pavement next to a strip of grass next to the side of a supermarket. varnish worn off pub tables some remaining at the edge. keep away from naked flame. was told to be a poet you must write a sonnet every day. remember shopping bag. the weather improves through the day rain clears for half an hour at a time then at increasing intervals. phone vibrates under fingers to indicate pick-up.

late night live art at kraak 1

Yesterday was the first of three Late Night Live Art events at Kraak in Manchester.

The reason I'm hammering Kraak so much at the moment isn't because I'm involved in these events (although I am) it's because I think it's an endeavour worth supporting. And like The Other Room although the potential audience might seem to be limited the intention is to welcome everyone who's interested and to avoid cliques. And given the size of audience for Tina Darragh and P.Inman at The Other Room this year work being challenging obviously isn't a bar to getting people through the door.

That said there was a very limited audience yesterday. But given that the gallery is only recently established, that the event ran from 10pm-1am on the night before a work day, and that it was live art from people who are not big names in Manchester it's probably not that surprising. There are advantages and disadvantages to only having a small group of people attend. The advantage is that it's relaxed and easy to talk to people, the disadvantage is that it's harder to get the kind of dynamic atmosphere you can with a larger group.

Probably the biggest set-up on the night were the desks that Gary Fisher and Graham Dunning were playing from. They played in collaboration, Graham mainly using decks and Gary using a variety of hand-made instruments played through a delay pedal. They played a couple of sets, although earlier in the night I was playing with my installation so wasn't able to concentrate as I would have liked. Later on they played two extended improvisations that combined pre-recorded sounds (tape, vinyl) with sounds generated live by either physical objects or electronic noise-makers. The effects were very restrained and subtle, sometimes even funny, and ranged from accumulated washes and throbs of tone through to harsh percussive sounds. Although Gary had more recognisable instruments on his desk, Graham's were perhaps the more traditionally musical contributions.

The later set was recorded on audio, and I think some photos were taken. I also have a few shots from the night but I haven't yet figured out how to get them from my phone to the blog*. I'll let you know when they go online. The music/sounds were more abstract than recognisably melodic, and each artist seemed to be echoing the other in some way, as well as responding to the physical environment of the gallery. Graham had some interesting recordings of speech that occupied an uncertain space between reassuringly quotidian and disturbing depending on how they were framed.

Gary as usual mainly incorporated his sounds into the overall picture almost invisibly, but such that it would change completely were his contribution removed. Although some actions, such as using the end of a jack-plug, or adding in hand-built scrap guitar and thumb piano were unavoidably present. Later on, before Lou's set, there was a brief riff for loop and delay pedals and multispeed drill.

There are things that can be achieved with music that are impossible to do with poetry. This has been a longstanding frustration. The levels of abstraction, non-meaning, layering and textural self-reference that are available remain a constant challenge.

Lou's performance piece was very different, much quieter and more reflective than the rest of the night. She sat at a table arranged for a meal with books to one side of her. A video camera behind her shoulder focussed closely on the plate in front of her, and the image was projected on a screen behind. Lou would read from one of the books, then pull out a page, place it on the plate and cut out a word or set of words using a knife and fork, then eat them. She then took a drink and started the process again.

The books included The Bible, one of Lewis Carroll's Alice books (possibly both in a single edition), Camus and a couple of others. Appropriately enough (and unsurprisingly given that Bible paper is made for opacity and strength despite its thinness) The Bible was apparently hardest to swallow.

In its leisurely pace, quietness, integrity of performance and apparent conceptual simplicity the piece was utterly absorbing. Because it is about things which make us - physically in the case of food, mentally in the case of books - the piece will have resonances for most people. For me the resonances were primarily to do with childhood - food in particular can become a battleground between parents and children (though never for me).

Both food and reading are areas where a child can begin to mark a difference between themselves and their parents, and where they have some control, but where much remains out of reach. Adult foods and adult books can be tantalising present but forbidden. Yet despite this frustration both activities, reading and eating, are pleasureable. Each feels like something you could carry on doing forever. But wherever you take pleasure in something as a child there's always an adult nearby using it to define you. So you don't just like reading, rather you're 'a bookworm', or you 'read science fiction'. With food it's a territory of allergies, accusations of 'faddy' eating, unpleasant food that's supposedly good for you, pleasant food that's bad for you, and a whole etiquette around eating - often different in public than at home.

And of course the analogy between some books and the restrictions around food is irresistable. In religious families the holy books are good for you - while normally dull in the extreme. Which of course brings us back to the indigestible Bible and Leviticus with its comic dietary restrictions. Books and food are both sites of pleasure and control. To summarise neatly what I've been trying rather awkwardly to say previously.

Some audio, video and photographs of the performance were recorded. Again I'll link to those when they come available. Likewise my own pictures of the night as already mentioned.

Prior to both the above my installation piece managed to get people involved as a more participatory project. It's something I'd done before in the flat when I put a mic in a cupboard and generated differing feedback by opening either the cupboard door or adjacent doors. On this occasion I had a set of plastic drawers standing in for kitchen units. The plastic was less effective than wood at preventing feedback, but effective enough for the piece to work. The way it worked had less to do with the manipulation of adjoining drawers and more to do with the location of people in the room in relation to walls, the open space of the door, and the positions of mic and amp.

Rather than something relatively static where you just closed and opened doors it became an interactive, performative piece, and one where the audience were performers. This is something I really enjoy. Moving, making floorboards creak (noises were obviously picked up by the mic), stepping between amp and mic, standing behind the plastic drawers, placing a hand over the amp all altered the sound.

As mentioned previously there are two more Late Night Live Art events, on 10 December and 17 December. I strongly encourage you to come along to them.

*Don't tell me tumblr or blogger mobile, I know and I'm looking into it. I'm just not sure if I can email from my phone at present, I also haven't checked out resizing images.

the other room 13 review

Today started badly but ended well.

The bad bits were an ongoing fiasco in which a well-known German courier company failed to delivery an order from a popular mobile phone store. The order in question was over a week late despite two days of speaking to the local courier depot and the mobile phone store's helpline. The order was only delivered after contacting the depot again, then phoning the store's helpline and threatening to cancel the purchase.

Work wasn't great either. Not much happening and a lot of dead time to fill.

So The Other Room 13 was a great relief. Incidentally this was both the thirteenth reading in the series, and attended by only thirteen people. A damn shame really given that it was a lot warmer tonight than it had been earlier in the week.

Sophie Robinson and Nick Thurston read, and formed an interesting contrast to one another. To put it at its crudest Sophie writes a poetry of human connections and emotional response - without writing the self-centred confessional verse that might suggest - while Nick produces a conceptual poetry that seems to be more concerned with the ways in which information is conveyed by written or spoken language than with the content of any specific message.

Sophie read first. My initial impression was of poems that were fractured, that have a broken and restless surface. This impression is strengthened by their presentation on the page in her book a which was one of several purchases on the night - poems from Geometries in the book have also appeared in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets. Capitalisation of words, use of symbols such as & and *, varying gaps between words (the lines of Geometries are justified so the sonnets form squares), abbreviations and non-standard spellings occur throughout. Although the poetry is very different the surface of the poems on the page was reminiscent of some of Caroline Bergvall's work. And Bergvall does contribute a foreword to a.

The next impression was of a personal poetry. Not personal in the sense of navel-gazing or self-indulgence, but personal in the sense of being engaged in the business of life, of negotiating a life with other people, of being concerned with and for others. That sense of connection, of a peopled world, contributed to the further impression of an urban poetry. Perhaps an urban domestic poetry, but without the cloying cosiness that might suggest.

And there was a real concern for language. For how it can be used to describe and define, and how that is both fundamental to communication while also being a tool of control. There was a sense, difficult to define, of how real things, real places, real people, real events can only be very inaccurately apprehended through language.

This kind of balance between the poetry of human connections and emotional response, and the poetry of fractured surface and discontinuity is something I'd dearly love to be able to achieve. Take this opening from the final poem in Geometries, 'the literary real, swollen w/myth, / a glass downpouring a shard a fleshy / we are different an unavailable / profusion'. Clearly this is also a thoughtful and intelligent poetry.

After a brief break during which I spent just short of £30 on books Nick Thurston read. His pieces really have as much in common with conceptual art as they do with most contemporary poetry. The first piece was one he also performed at Bury during the Text Festival, an mp3 of Andrew Motion introducing his own poems (from The Poetry Archive) thankfully without the actual poems. The effect is very funny in places and is a fantastic critique of the kind of poetics represented by Motion.

Nick then read from Historia Abscondita, another purchase on the night, which is the index of Walter Kaufmann's English translation of Nietzsche's The Gay Science with all page references removed. This provides a kind of commentary on Nietzsche and the translation. I'm not sure of what order the next two pieces were read in. One was a reading of a blank page in which Nick stood for a minute holding the page and saying nothing. The other was a chronological list of the names of British troops who have died in the present conflict in Afghanistan. This has obvious political resonance. Nick deliberately chose to start the poem without explanatory gloss, leaving us to try and pick our way through the names. The effect was to make us concentrate on the names, on the associations that names that were nearly familiar had, rather than turning the piece into a sentimental and dutiful litany we felt obliged to listen to.

We were left with the voice of the speaking clock until Nick's laptop decided to switch off. There should have been a visual aspect to the performance but for some reason the laptop and projector weren't communicating with one another. Had it not been for the presence of the projector screen you might never have known an element was missing.

I like Nick's work and found it both thoughtful and funny. There is a strand to it which is very much about identity, how we define ourselves and others by the kinds of language we use, as well as how we use them, that echoes concerns in Sophie's work. On the whole I perhaps prefer Sophie's poetry but both writers are engaging and intelligent.

So my purchases on the night. From Alec Newman I bought a copy of Steven Waling's Captured Yes, the most recent of Alec's Knives, Forks and Spoons Press publications. From the stall I bought Sophie Robinson's a from Les Figues Press, Nick Thurston's Historia Abscondita from information as material, Lucy Harvest Clarke's Silveronda from if p then q, and two magazines - the final Parameter with the whole of Richard Barrett's The Rushes and other poems by William Garvin, Jim Goar and Steven Waling, and the first issue of Sunfish, a new magazine edited by Nigel Wood and with with an impressive debut line-up including The Other Room's Scott Thurston, Geof Huth and Amy King.

All told a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

I didn't stay out afterwards as I really didn't want to spend any more money, and in any case had a new phone to play with at home.

I'll see you for the next reading in February. Details soon.

events this week

Tonight it's the latest of The Other Room readings at The Old Abbey Inn (Manchester Science Park, Pencroft Way, M15 6AY). Sophie Robinson and Nick Thurston read. It kicks off at 7pm, entry is free so you can save your money for soft drinks and books.



I finally managed to get a better resolution image of the flyer for Late Night Live Art at Kraak. There are three events - tomorrow, Thursday 3 December, and the two following Thursdays, 10 & 17 December. The doors are open between 10pm-11pm and the events finish at 1am.

Tomorrow's event features me, Graham Dunning, Gary Fisher and Louise Woodcock. The event on 10 December will feature me, Helen Shanahan (tbc), Louise Woodcock, and probably one other tbc. On 17 December the event will feature Dave Fox (tbc), Noise Research, Danny Saul (tbc), and probably one other tbc.

Kraak is upstairs at 11 Stevenson Square (behind Hula Bar). See also their Facebook page for details (or my previous coverage of the space).

Tomorrow I have an installation piece using a mic, an amp and a set of drawers. On 10 December I'll have a mixing desk and a bunch of field recordings. It'd be cool to see you there. They're asking for a donation of only £2 which seems more than reasonable.