Tuesday 22 May 2012

I’m involved in this, organised by Rosanne Robertson:

Attributed Sound

Thursday 31 May, 18:00 - AWOL Studios, Hope Mill, Ancoats



RS Projects would like to invite you to Attributed Sound

A collaborative visual/sound art collaboration bringing together artists from Manchester, Liverpool, Cumbria, Swansea and California

A collaborative visual/sound art project and event spurred on by a group response and solution to one single artists problem and frustrations.

This is a problem shared.

We will create a series of new little problems or solutions- which ever way you look at them.

All artists will respond to a 2D artwork produced by Rosanne Robertson with a sound piece to form a compilation album. The event consists of a sound art exhibition, symposium and the launch of the compilation followed by some live sound making. This event will be hosted at ‘RS Project Space’ housed on the 5th floor of Awol Studios by Robertson/Sharp a new artist’s events venture.

Artists:
Shaun Blezard
Matt Dalby
Rob Dunne
TanDog
Softworld: Jeremy Gluck and Don Tyler
Hot Hail
Ian Simpson
Debbie Sharp
Josef Minta
Rosanne Robertson

31st May 6-10pm
RS Project Space

5th Floor
Awol Studios
Hope Mill
Ancoats
M4 7JA

Map

Entry is donation and there will be a donation bar.

Follow @rs_takeover and tweet using hashtag #attributedsound
Add yourself to the event on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/events/341901235882302/?ref=ts RSVP to hello@attributedsound.com

Friday 18 May 2012

A bit of an excursion from my recent playing with noise (and noisy recordings). A clean, decent fidelity song. Or at least short looped phrases layered over each other.

(Source: youtube.com)

Sunday 29 April 2012

Recorded relatively late today, after 9pm, this is a 23+ minute motorik rhythm. The only changes are the addition of new sounds and the consequent building of volume.

It’s probably not the kind of thing you want to sit and listen to. Join in. Dance. Hypnotise yourself.

The name comes from the fact it’s inspired by the Bettany Hughes BBC series Divine Women, especially the first programme.

As I’ve said elsewhere it’s entirely possible I’ve nicked the rhythm from somewhere else, quite likely the soundtrack of the programme. 

Saturday 28 April 2012

Some more recent sounds out today through Ian Simpson’s Electronic Musik netlabel.

Waking is a 21 minute EP featuring two tracks, Green and Second Sight.

A similar mix of live, messy, lo-fi home recordings to Chevassut out earlier in the week on Graham Dunning’s OSG netlabel.

Tuesday 24 April 2012

Here’s some of what I’ve been up to while I haven’t been writing my journal.

http://archive.org/details/MattDalby-Chevassut

A release for some my ‘lo-fi noise, drone and folk’ (his description) from Graham Dunning’s excellent OSG (Open Sound Group) netlabel.

It’s a free download - I also took the cover photo.

With the exception of Did The Morning? recorded at the end of March this year (2012), and Crawl recorded and assembled in (email) collabration with Tim Gaze in 2009, all the tracks are from April this year.

They explore emotional states while never precisely locating them for the listener. The aesthetic as ever is awkward and unfinished.

Check out the other stuff on Graham’s label while you’re there. I recommend the live Womb recording, but there’s much more of interest there.

My journal is still on hiatus. I haven’t been writing it, for one.

There are reasons why I haven’t been writing it. Partly because I haven’t had much time, and when I have had time I haven’t had the inclination.

Anyone who’s followed the journal, or my main blog santiago’s dead wasp, or even my twitter feed @soundpoet since New Year may be dimly aware that I haven’t been as prolific, or as enthusiastic about things this year as I have in the recent past.

I can’t go into all the reasons for this. Some of it, as mentioned previously here and elsewhere I think, is arriving back in Manchester and having to immediately find work and a place to live. I also came from three months of a pretty constant day length of 11 hours, where dawn and dusk didn’t drag on, where it was bright and up around 18°C most days, to a cold, dark, wintery UK. Not to mention that Manchester is a smaller, lower-rise, less populous, quieter city than Kunming.

All of these things made coming back difficult. Then too, I expected things to be much the same as they had been when I went away. But of course they weren’t. I’d changed and grown, my friends had changed and grown, Womb was coming to an end. On a simple pragmatic level I had a lot less money than previously.

Now throw in the reasons I’ve felt a little shit that I can’t go into, and you may be able to see why I’ve felt disinclined to keep a journal.

It’s been more important for me to catch up with friends - always my first priority - and to try and get on with making art.

But even making art’s been a struggle. I managed an okay-ish piece for the Artists’ Bonfire, and I almost made myself ill completing 100+ visual poem pieces for the Maintenant event in London a couple of weeks back (at a time when I didn’t feel much like going anywhere). Other than that there’s been nothing, other than the sound/music I’ll come to shortly.

A friend suggested to me the other day that in terms of creativity I may have been pushing myself too hard. That after a busy couple of years maybe I could do with a break and should try and step back.

I think that she’s probably right, and that if I’m not careful, and keep pushing myself to try and create art that just isn’t there, on top of all the emotional upheaval at present, I run the risk of burning out.

I am going to try and step back and not pressure myself to create anything. Perhaps try and take a break from making art altogether for a few weeks.

The only exception to this being the sound/music I mentioned earlier. Before I went to China I had a brief creative flurry, and all the time I was there found it frustrating that it wasn’t really possible for me to make the kind of sounds I wanted.

Since returning I’ve experimented with both new ideas, and with ideas I’ve explored in the past. I started by making longform, dancey pieces based on beats and looped voice. They gradually mutated into pieces like mantras or chants.

At the same time as that transformation was happening I started to record quite conventional songs. I also revived, tidied up, and started to promote my YouTube channel.

In doing so I discovered some (often extremely) rough-sounding live performances and noisy recordings from some time ago. They excited me far more than the rather conservative songs, and restrained, polite longform pieces I was making. So I’ve started to explore that part of my creativity again.

As far as that goes I’m absolutely bursting with ideas and desperate to create more tracks. Even more I feel the need to perform live and play with noise in public very urgently. I did make efforts, starting in January, to try and secure support gigs - but so far with no success. Maybe another push of making myself a nuisance might pay off.

So, the situation now is this: I still feel shit, and I’m not especially enjoying being back in the UK. I have a better idea why this is - some of it is an inevitable consequence of returning from a residency in a busy country to a quotidian working life, some of it is putting myself under undue pressure to create art when I should probably give myself a few weeks off, and some of it is difficult emotional situations.

None of which is conducive to keeping a journal. And even when it has been, the contents of the journal entries are things haven’t been able to publish. I hope that explains the reasons for my silence, which is likely to continue for a little while longer.

Which means that starting now I’m taking a break from creating art for an indefinite period - probably a few weeks - with the exception of making an abrasive racket whenever I get the chance. Further, I’m not going to pressure myself to write the journal, or reviews, or anything else for my blogs unless I really can’t stop myself.

This may mean a few weeks of relative silence. It feels weird, but it’s for my own mental and physical wellbeing.

Monday 12 March 2012

[No entry. Another photo. Hopefully the end of three weeks silence here.]

Sunday 11 March 2012

[No entry. You know the drill by now. Another photo to keep you going umtil the next post - probably on Tuesday.]

Saturday 10 March 2012

[No entry. Two photos, simply because they go together. Have a great weekend.]

Friday 9 March 2012

[No entry. There probably would never have been an entry for today anyway. An excellent party, and the happiest I’d been in a long time would have seen to that.

Not the cheeriest photo to reflect that, but what the hell. Normal-ish service soon, honest.]