Coming soon!
Magneto Mori: Brussels - Mark Vernon
Out Sept 12
One way to interpret Vernon’s evocation of Brussels is as a patchwork of interdependent absences. We hear numerous spoken stories, yet none of them in full; details are lost to magnetic erasure, to the truncations of compositional editing, to the recollective limits of fallible minds. A voice hesitates as it recounts an early memory of falling. Another falters into damaged tape as it describes a trip into the forest, words sunken irretrievably under disruptive plosives. Into these gaps, Vernon pours atmospheres that perfectly render sensations of potential and inarticulability: the gurgling of water, the overlapping chatter of public spaces, amorphous suspensions of drone, all of which act like guardians to these tender zones of absent specifics.
One speaker describes their return to a familiar space as like “rewriting on the same page, and sort of erasing what I had lived there, in order to make space for new memories”. It’s therefore perfect that Vernon’s process should centre the manipulation of analogue tape: a medium synonymous with the imperfect overlay of the past upon itself, with the previous contents of overwritten cassettes forever threatening to burst through. After recording residents of Brussels describing their earliest childhood memories, Vernon intentionally distressed the tape and buried it underground for 10 days, placing it alongside magnets that damaged and part-erased the contents. These recordings were then excavated and recombined in a random sequence, with Vernon occasionally “reconstructing” damaged memories by inserting extracts from the higher-fidelity originals. Despite the hands-on nature of this process, the end result feels like a more authentic depiction of the interaction between time and human memory than if Vernon had simply allowed the untampered tape to run. The present is never an immaculate and unbroken “now”, but a nonlinear jostle of immediate sensory experience, overlain recollections and lost histories pressing in at the edges, the words scrawled over themselves until the page starts to give way.
-- Jack Chuter
About Mark Vernon:
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based artist who explores concepts of audio archaeology, magnetic memory and nostalgia through his sound works. At the core of his practice lies a fascination with the intimacy of the radio voice, environmental sound, obsolete media and the reappropriation of found recordings. A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds. These diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, multi-channel diffusion, fixed media and live performances.
A keen advocate of radio as an art form, he co-runs and curates Glasgow’s art radio station, Radiophrenia. He was a founding member of Glasgow’s Radio Tuesday collective and went on to set up several other RSL art radio projects in the UK including Hair Waves, Efford FM and Nowhere Island Radio. He is an award winning radio producer who has created programmes for stations including Resonance FM, VPRO, Sound Art Radio, Radio Revolten, Deutschland Radio Kultur, Radio Cona, Radio Picnic, Ears Have Ears, Kunstradio, Wavefarm, RADIA, EBU and the BBC.
Out now!
Soundwalkscapes (vol 2) - Viv Corringham
In the rural terrain of Prespes, Greece, Viv Corringham emits a croak that mimics both a passing bee and the clucking of a distant chicken, straddling their sonic similarities, drawing both animals into unexpected kinship. In Muenster, Germany, she traces the undulation of air billowing through a train station, suddenly dragging the rhythm to the foreground of our attention. As with the first instalment of Soundwalkscapes, her voice is used to revive a “lost river”, this time focusing on the Walbrook in London – she relays various tour-guide tidbits regarding the river’s history, occasionally resurrecting the river’s contours through the swoops and chicanes of improvised song. She croons into tunnels; she plucks out the dominant pitch within a morass of traffic noise. Her presence enriches our intimacy with these spaces, conveying the warmth of a harbour-side cafe, giving voice to the raindrop sidling down a window, swelling into the subterranean, illuminating the distances. She unravels the simplistic notion that to listen deeply requires the subject to remain silent. Rather than subduing herself to strive for a supposedly “unmediated” rendering of these places, Corringham is purposefully present throughout, guiding our ears toward intricacies that would have otherwise passed unperceived.
The process for Soundwalkscapes is as follows: take a walk each month, make recordings en route, assemble compositions from the materials gathered. There are numerous fantastical turns, with field recordings dropping out to reveal overlain lattices of voice, as if Corringham has retreated from her surroundings and into the interiors of daydreaming. Elsewhere she flings herself into the stereo corners, disguising her vocalisations as muzak playing out the coffee shop speakers, or as strange amphibious creatures tucked within the persistent rain. Occasionally she addresses the people within these soundscapes directly, ordering a small cappuccino with 2% milk during the closing moments of “August (Rain, Sag Harbor, NY)”, dispelling any notions of the recordist as a pair of disembodied ears floating through their environment undetected. As the title of this project makes clear, the walker is inextricably woven into the soundscape, altering and enlivening the space as they proceed – a body in persistent dialogue with their world, playfully adherent to museum visitor etiquette, sensitive to changes in weather and social atmosphere, occasionally craving the satiation of a hot drink.
— Jack Chuter
========================
About Viv:
VIV CORRINGHAM (voice, electronics, field recordings)
is a US based British vocalist and sound artist, who has been described as “a vital force in improvised music since the late 1970s” (Corey Mwamba, BBC Radio 3) and “a vocalist of stunning virtuosity” (Louise Gray, The Wire).
She makes concerts, soundwalks, workshops and installations. Her practice explores relations between voice, place and walking, responding with sung improvisations to both natural and urban soundscapes.
More: vivcorringham.org
Out now!
Ghost Artery - dogs versus shadow
Out March 2025
A sonic investigation of the history and decline of Nottingham's River Trent in two acts.
In 1938 when the River Trent was being dredged by the Trent Navigation Company, workers encountered obstructions in the form of wooden stakes driven into the riverbed. Following an investigation by archaeologists it was concluded that the site was part of a Bronze Age ‘pile settlement’ formed of houses on stilts 3000 years ago. Now dislodged and disturbed the remains of this settlement began bubbling to the surface, changing the landscape around it.
Ghost Artery by dogs versus shadows scores this swirl of history with the contemporary realities of the highly polluted River Trent. He explains "the work is a sonic exploration of the once thriving River Trent’s decline, imagined as ghosts poisoning the arterial waterway - causing the link between people and place to deteriorate." The River Trent catchment was hit by over 30,000 sewage spills in 2022 leading to a dramatic decline to aquatic life, and at times rendering swimming a danger to human health.
As dogs versus shadows notes: "To the casual observer, the river is always as it was. Beneath the surface however, the ghosts are awake…"
In this complex work comprised of field recordings, tape loops, dying vocals from broken dictaphones and snatches of shortwave radio, Ghost Artery tunes us into the ghoulish realities awash within our rivers and the multiple ways these weaken our connections to each other, and the past.
Reference to sewage spills in Trent: www.trentriverstrust.org/a-big-stink-sewage-in-the-trent-and-tributaries/
Out now!
Rubber Band Music - Kate Carr
Out March 2025
bright lines stretched thin,
spring back and creak,
little slingshot.
a temporary bundle.
these desk-bound daydreams,
of rubber trees and sap.
let's snap and break.
Experiments with building and playing rubber-band noise boxes.