Boring Like A Drill.

The original premise behind this piece was quite simple.

After some trial and error, a working model was hammered into shape.

A further year of development and the piece is now perfected.

The patch was constructed in AudioMulch, using only the components that come as standard with the software except for one freeware signal modeller at the very last stage.

In the above diagram it should be clear that there are no inputs to the system. None of the components play samples or generate signals. The patch is a network of interacting feedback circuits.

The network is played by sending MIDI instructions to the various controls on each component. During a performance, the system typically receives about 1000 MIDI commands per minute. To do this, I had to write a script that would generate a MIDI file containing all the instructions.

The script inserts commands and controller values according to (pseudo)random numbers. Randomness has to be used thoughtfully to get interesting, distinctive results, so a lot of revising, tweaking and polishing went into writing the script. The user can define basic parameters and bias weightings (duration, amount of activity) when the script is run.

The result?

Just now I’ve added another element: human intervention. For my upcoming live shows I will be playing these pieces directly from the patch and the script. Even when playing from the same score, the system will produce different sounds each time it is run: the score determines its behaviour, not its output. In the live shows I will be playing a MIDI controller to insert additional commands, which may have an immediate or delayed effect on the system.

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In a couple of weeks I’ll be travelling to Australia to play some live shows, as part of the Inland concert series.

I’ll be playing a specially-prepared live version of Chain Of Ponds, my piece for computer-generated feedback. Lucky punters will get to hear chance-determined feedback signals created right on the spot. A sample of what you’re in for can be heard on Bandcamp.

I’ll be in Melbourne on Thursday 10 November 2016, 8pm at the Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St, Carlton. The Sydney gig will be on Monday 14 November 2016, 8pm at Glebe Justice Centre, 37-47 St. Johns Road, Glebe. Both shows are packed with great musicians I can’t wait to hear.

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I’ve added another album to my Bandcamp store. The album costs £5, or you can download (most, not all) of the individual tracks individually for free. There are 144 tracks so you can feel like a big shot and pay for pure convenience. It’s about 90 minutes of music and the album comes with printable cover art, detailed sleeve notes and a video displaying attractive colour study scores for each piece.

The 144 Pieces For Organ were composed in 2014, generated entirely from a set of formulas in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Think of them as musical snowflakes: each one a unique outcome from a single set of rules.

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In 2016 I wrote the sleeve notes for a new LP release of a long, obscure tape experiment by William S. Burroughs. Recorded in London around 1968, only a tiny number copies of the tape have ever been publicly available until now. A slightly edited version of the tape is now released by Paradigm Discs with the title Curse Go Back.

In the late 1960s, the streets of Swinging London were haunted by the grim spectre of William Burroughs. Amidst the free love, paisley and rock’n’roll he slipped like a shadow, bent on a dark magic to wreak revenge and revolution. A perpetual exile, he found himself once again hiding in the margins. He had been the godfather of the 1950s counter-culture but in the 1960s, while the counter-culture became mainstream, he remained a cult figure, a touchstone for the underground’s underground….

Where Electronic Revolution dealt with theory, this recording, made by Burroughs sometime around 1968, shows Burroughs’ thinking in practice. It documents one of the purest, longest and most intensely focused of his tape experiments. Before one can break down language’s control over society, exercises such as these are needed to break down its control over one’s own consciousness. It’s an alchemical exercise, both in its transformative use of material and in its method, a mix of shamanistic ritual with the trappings and attitude of scientific research.

Curse Go Back can be ordered through Paradigm Discs. The complete sleeve notes are reprinted on my website.

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This month, I’m pretty excited about giving a public airing to the biggest piece of music I’ve made. A section of my 18-hour piano piece Antisonata will be playing as one of the sound works at the Speeding and Braking exhibition.

Speeding and Braking: Navigating Acceleration is a conference with exhibitions and performances at Goldsmiths College, London, from 12 to 15 May 2016. You can hear Antisonata and other sound works on Saturday 14 May, from 10am to 5pm at G05, St James Hatcham Church on the Goldsmiths campus. Free entry.

Antisonata is the piece that plays all 555 of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas at the same time but very, very slowly; so slowly that they take as long to perform as if played one at a time.

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I’ve got a new album of music up on Bandcamp, titled Chain of Ponds.

It’s the culmination of various experiments I’ve made over the years using digital feedback synthesis, and I’m finally getting results I find fully satisfactory. I like the textural richness that can be brought out of something so conceptually neat. It’s kind of harsh, but kind of pastoral, to my ears.

You can stream it below, buy it cheap, or contact me (email, direct message on Twitter etc.) and I might still have some free download codes to email you.

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Coming up this week: three days of listening to music of extremes at Huddersfield last week. Also, I’m putting out some new music at last.

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Next month I’ll be part of Control, a group show of interactive music next month at Cafe Oto’s Project Space.

A single dial is connected to a single speaker, but the relationship between the two is not fixed; it flits between a range of possibilities composed by a diverse range of artists. Visitors are invited to use the dial to make sounds, and to thus explore the links between their actions, the limits of the dial, and the musical ideas embedded in the software by the artists.

It’s on from 10 to 13 September, from 1 to 9 pm each day at Oto Project Space. (Free entry.) Yes, there’s a gig the night before by some of the people in the show. I won’t be playing, but I might be talking. Hope you come and enjoy it!

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I’ve run out of copies of my CD Redundens for Piano, so I’ve put it up on Bandcamp for download in high-quality audio.

You may pay whatever you want, or nothing at all. The main reason I’ve put the free option there is because I always find it a hassle clicking through screens and giving my payment details to download something. It’s a deterrent. Still, I will not be upset if you wish to pay a small sum of money for it.

Redundens for Piano contains seven pieces from the Redundens series. Begun in 2001, all the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.

More pieces in the Redundens series can be found on the main part of my website.

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I’m flying to Australia in the morning to see some friends and family, so instead of packing I’m listening through some recordings I’ve been making. It’s a more sophisticated version of the feedback piece I played at Goldsmiths earlier this year. The sounds are more subtle, more detailed, more focused and more organic. I’m recording short takes of concentrated, nicely balanced material.

The problem is: the more I record, the more interesting details I uncover. Simultaneously, I record more dross that should be edited out. So I listen back to edit out the less successful takes. The more I listen, the more details I find interesting, and so the more I want to preserve. Here is one of the better takes; a complete, stand-alone work.

Part of me is reluctant to throw anything out, for fear of losing a pleasing subtlety that becomes more rewarding over time. I’m probably kidding myself, and the bits that strike me as good straight away will have the same effect on other listeners. On the other hand, those ‘good’ bits might sound false and gimmicky once the novelty wears off.

The usual response in this situation is to set it all aside until I’ve forgotten what I thought about the piece at all, and salvage what I can after re-hearing it fresh.

The alternative is to make finished pieces and put them on Bandcamp with a pay nothing/anything option, and see which pieces people go for. I’m thinking of using it as a place of trying new work out, as something more interesting than just dumping finished work for sale.

(Also debating if setting a minimum price puts people off just because it’s a hassle clicking through payment options. It makes it seem like you’re making a commitment to something, even if it’s only a small price.)

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Same old problem: I keep making music without thinking about what to do with it after I’ve heard it. Some of it goes on Soundcloud, some of it gets uploaded to this site and when I’m procrastinating I make videos and put them on YouTube.

From a while I had a few stacks of CDs lying around but they’re almost gone now, hopefully for good. Occasionally someone asks me about getting hold of something old; there were small editions of CD-Rs but it seems like an excess of effort to burn off some more discs and print the covers.

I spent the winter break digging up some dusty old pieces and polishing them up to a standard I could live with. Now that they’re done, I’m taking the low road of vanity publishing and putting them up for sale on Bandcamp. It’s kind of like what people these days call “closure”.

Pricing, web design, promotion are all works in progress because I don’t know what I’m doing here. For now, you can get hold of mp3s or high quality lossless audio of tracks or albums with printable cover art. At the moment the albums are old releases I’m still happy with, but if things go well I might put up some new things I’ve been working on.

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I promised to post a sample of what to expect at next Saturday’s gig in the Great Hall at Goldsmiths College, so here it is.

Chain Of Ponds is a composed system of interconnected digital feedback circuits. All the sounds are generated in the software programme AudioMulch, configured into a complex network of components. None of the components generate an audio signal or play samples; the sounds are produced by the interaction between the components.

I’ve written a script in Cakewalk Application Language which generates a chance-determined MIDI file to control the AudioMulch file. Over 800 parameters are individually controlled and adjusted by this MIDI file. The weightings of the chance operation in the script can be manipulated by the user, to influence the probabilities affecting attributes such as density of events, types of activity, the range of possible changes, lengths of periods of stability/instability, subdivisions within the work and to “silence” or “freeze” certain parameters, each assignable to different groups of controls.

In the Great Hall I’ll be diffusing the sounds generated in real time, controlling the sounds sent to each of the eight speakers located around the room.

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I’ll be playing in/with the Great Hall at Goldsmiths on Saturday 7 February 2015, as part of an all-weekend project by Contingent Events.

Things start at noon on Saturday; I’ll be on at 1.30 pm.

All the performers will be playing around with the acoustics of the Great Hall through an unusual 8-channel speaker arrangement. The whole event is an informal, exploratory occasion, with composers and musicians trying out different ideas or playing full pieces. People are welcome to come and go and wander around the space as they please. The schedule is pretty much continuous throughout the day.

I think I’ll be working on this new piece for multiple interconnected feedback loops, which I was polishing over the new year break. I’ll post some teaser samples of what I’ve got in mind later in the week.

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I’m preparing for the gig I’m playing at Cafe Oto next Wednesday.

The basic idea is to create two feedback systems, one digital and one analogue, which can feed into each other.

The digital part is a patch created in AudioMulch.

The analogue part is made from circuits of effects boxes. It’ll look neater once I’ve finalised the design.

This is a composition: a patterned integrity through which information is shaped into music. As I mentioned before, if the composition is both elegant and robust then the music will come from its design and any performing gestures I make will be in response to the system, without my having to impose my aesthetic will upon it.

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I’m please to announce that I’m part of the Machinations tour by Jolt Projects. They’re playing two gigs in London, Tuesday 29 July at The Forge and Wednesday 30 July at Cafe Oto.

At The Forge, LRAO will feature duets by cellist Lucy Railton and violinist Aisha Orazbayeva, followed by James Hullick’s post-apocalyptic chamber opera Bruchlandung. Performers on the night include acclaimed German baritone Guillermo Anzorena, Australia’s eclectic pianist Michael Kieran Harvey and supernatural cellist Judith Hamann.

At Cafe Oto Jolt is presenting The Nis, combining sound artist collective Amplified Elephants, the BOLT Ensemble and, of course, robots. On the same night will be live electronic sets by the legendary John Wall and myself.

I’ll be giving the first live performance of the new, augmented version of this feedback piece I’ve been working on. Hope you can all come along!

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