The Wire Salon: How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War Two To Hiphop
The Wire
The Wire’s monthly series of salon events returns after an extended Christmas and New Year break with an illustrated talk by the magazine’s former hiphop columnist Dave Tompkins on the history of the vocoder. The talk will be based on Dave's acclaimed recent book on synthetic voice phenomena, How To Wreck A Nice Beach (available from Stop Smiling Books)
In anticipation of the salon Dave and Monk One have made an exclusive edit of their How To Wreck A Nice Beach mix for The Wire. You can download it here. Also, click here to read Dave's extensive annotated track list for the mix in all its unexpurgated glory.
The Wire Salon: How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War Two To Hiphop takes place at London's Cafe Oto, 15 February, 8pm, £4.
In addition to his appearance at the salon, Dave will also be talking on (as opposed to through) the vocoder at the Off The Page festival in Whitstable this weekend...
Tags: cafe oto | Dave Tompkins | download | events | How To Wreck A Nice Beach | Music discussion | off the page | The Wire | the wire salon
The Wire Salon: We Hear A New World: Microphony, Technology & The Rise Of Sound Art
The Wire
At the turn of the century sound art reached a new level of visibility with a cluster of high-profile shows and countless below-the-radar initiatives. Meanwhile, new thinking about sound has led to an extraordinary proliferation of practices, and in recent years a phalanx of sound recordists and sonic artists has emerged to stage a revolutionary coup on behalf of sound, demanding its right to exist both in and of itself, free of the competing agendas of music or the visual arts.
The emergence of this new world of audio was accelerated by the dual technologies of microphony and digital processing, and can be heard in the examples of acoustic ecology and anthropology; desktop synthesis; the form-destroying praxes of Noise makers; Reductionism's amplification of previously occult sound events; frequency experiments with waveforms and pure tones; and more.
A cluster of recent books on this area has showcased the range of thinking behind the new sound art. For some, this work calls for a renewed focus on the perceiving body; for others, sound art offers new perspectives on the circulation of cultural meanings; for others still, sound has removed itself from the realm of the human to occupy a world where we simply don't figure.
For this edition of The Wire Salon, artist/writer Salomé Voegelin, author of Listening To Noise And Silence (Continuum), Helen Frosi, curator of the Soundfjord gallery, and critic/sound artist Will Montgomery discuss the new philosophies and practices that have emerged in recent years to map and calibrate the new world that has been revealed by 21st century sound art.
The Wire Salon: We Hear A New World: Microphony, Technology & The Rise Of Sound Art takes place at London's Café Oto, 2 September, 8pm, £4 Ticket on the door only.
Plus: take part in an audience-participation sound art quiz and have your perception of the audio world around you reshaped!
In anticipation of the night, we've put together the following reading list with links to online MP3s, videos and texts:
Read:
• "Return To Form: Christoph Cox On Neo-Modernist Sound Art" from
Artforum, November, 2003
•Seth Kim-Cohen's "The Hole Truth: On Doug Aitken's Sonic Pavilion" from Artforum November, 2009
• Read about Konstantin Raudive and Electronic Voice Phenomenon
• Ubuweb's Kenny Goldsmith on sound art
• David Toop on The Art Of Noise
Watch:
•
A selection of video work by Brandon LaBelle: Concert #2:
working with participants to stage the tension between sight and
sound; Perspectives: writing and listening action in
public space; Z: writing action utilizing motion-tracking
to generate sound in real-time.
• Mike Patton and Luciano Chessa test out reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori noise machines.
• Join the Soundasart mailing list
• More
sound art links (via Seth Cluett)
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The Wire Salon is a monthly series of salon events, hosted by The Wire magazine, and dedicated to the fine art and practice of thinking and talking about music. The evenings, which take place on the first Thursday of each month, will consist of readings, talks, panel discussions, film screenings, DJ sets and even the occasional live performance.
Tags: cafe oto | events | Helen Frosi | Music discussion | News | Salomé Voegelin | Sound Art | The Wire | The Wire Magazine | the wire salon | Uncategorized | Will Montgomery
The Wire Salon: Electric Eden
The Wire
Our monthly salon series continues with a talk by The
Wire’s Editor-at-Large Rob
Young based on his history of folk, folk rock, psychedelia and
the British imagination, Electric
Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (published by
Faber And Faber, 5 August 2010.). The talk will be illustrated with
film and audio clips and will be followed by a discussion of the
book’s central themes; plus DJ Jonny Trunk will be in
attendance spinning the sounds of wyrd and wired Britain. London
Café Oto, 5 August, 8pm, £4.
• Read: The Incredible String Band and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Extract from Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young
• Read: Into The Woods. "Across folk, classical, pop and exploratory music, the sense of exile from Eden is key to the progress of British music in the twentieth century, writes Rob Young." Article for The Journal Of Music.
• Listen: Exotic Pylon podcast. Featuring conversation between Rob Young and host Jonny Mugwump. The show lasts 90 minutes and includes a selection of music from Talk Talk, Peter Bellamy, Steeleye Span, John Ireland, Dave Cousins, Archie Fisher, Mandy Morton & Spriguns, Robin Williamson and Alasdair Roberts.
Tags: cafe oto | Electric Eden | events | Faber And Faber | News | Rob Young | The Wire | the wire salon
Blow Up: Exploding Sound and Noise (London - Brighton 1959-1969)
The Wire
An exhibition curated by The Wire’s David Toop and Tony Herrington that investigates the links between artists from different disciplines who were active in London and Brighton in the 1960s, as well as the simultaneous emergence of a shared ‘Noise’ aesthetic.
[caption id="attachment_495" align="aligncenter" width="300"
caption="Still from Jeff Keen's Marvo (1967)"]
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The exhibition features material on a host of Swinging London’s counterculture figures including artists John Latham and Gustav Metzger, jazz musicians Joe Harriott and Coleridge Goode, Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, improvisors John Stevens and AMM, composer Annea Lockwood, film maker Jeff Keen, and sound/text poet Bob Cobbing. London Flat Time House, 24 June–25 July.
John Latham's Encyclopedia Britannica
(1971)
Tags: aesthetic | AMM | Annea Lockwood | art | Bob Cobbing | Coleridge Goode | David Toop | events | Flat Time House | Gustav Metzger | Jeff Keen | Joe Harriott | John Latham | john stevens | noise | peckham | Pink Floyd | Swinging London | Syd Barrett | The Wire | tony herrington