Diolch i pawb am dod allan ar nos Iau diweddaf a thrwy’r arddangosfa.
Thank you to everyone for coming out last Thursday night and through the exhibition!
A few images and clips from the installation as it continued to change over 3 days in Oriel Saith (Thanks to Elsa and Sam V for the photos from Thursday, I managed to completely forget to press record on anything!)
Cylch Arall continues an experiment in combining traditional music and contemporary instruments with live video processing to explore themes of time and place.
Opening on Thursday with a performance with my good friends Ceri and Elsa. We will be playing a few traditional Welsh folk tunes and hearing how they work with a mix of modular synthesisers and traditional harp and fiddle!
Last year Elsa and I played the tune Aberteifi to accompany local storyteller Jessie Wild and we recorded a version for the Cylch Aberteifi video show as part of the Festival of Lights, well several versions, these two got posted.
Ive been invited to play some sounds on Wednesday evening for the Walden Arts folk here in Aberteifi.
So with the sun in Taurus, I will be playing modular synths with a set of Taurean and Venusian flavour tunes and cosmic samples to ramble through.
POOL is a beginning, the starting point for a stream.
Afon artists are invited to browse a database of vinyl records and select a track or album to create a sonic POOL from which samples will flow and LOOP to become a stream.
Forming in the fixed water sign of Scorpio, POOL suggests the start of a journey into hidden otherworlds. Moving into and immersion in the POOL takes us into the unknown, a place where real and unreal worlds interact, where both become fluid memory and noise is the only true reality..
The POOL starts to form with these selected records :
Joni Mitchel – Clouds;
Johnny Cash – Big River;
Top of the Pops Artistes – Float on;
Neil Diamond – Walk on Water;
Johnny Cash & Marty Robbins – Cool Water
Improvised audio visuals with J&K Hodges on turntables, pedals and synths. Cardinal water and crystal circles for an anniversary with live circle drawing by Spike from https://waldenarts.co.uk/
The Fourth Circle
The fourth circle is a return to the cardinal mode, itself suggesting a new initiatory principle that marks a shift towards more tangible and visible circles both at home and beyond.
Astrologically speaking the 4th house represents the home and family life, echoes the zodiac sign of Cancer, the cardinal mode and water element. The number 4 also suggests solidity, stability and structure, perhaps representing the solid physical world. With these principles in mind the work will extend further into the physical space of the studio and around my home as well as out to wider audiences in the coming year..
The social ritual that has developed over the year of the third circle with Jay and Keryl will also be extended to create a new, larger circle around the home, engaging more people in the physical world by inviting new participants to social ritual performances around the 4 Cardinal points of the zodiac.
(edited extract from circular ramblings)
I will be performing some new work for this in a couple of weeks…
Looking at my vinyl record database and thinking of the years I spent over the valley from Abercych in Llechryd, watching the floods come and go…
I used to put all the pictures in a set on flickr – Sometimes I live by a Lake
I’m finding some interesting river songs and sleeves in my collection and putting a few out in Bara Menyn in the lead up to the festival.. starting with a the 3 locally themed albums
And then to include singles from further afield
Lovely to be invited back to show some vinyl records in Bara Menyn. Revisiting the dance theme post dance camp.
This was last years celebration of dance themed records https://thefoundofmusic.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/non-stop-dancing/
Probably my favourite record shop bag is this one from the long gone ‘Centre of Music’ in Cardigan. The shop was first located in the centre of town I believe, on the site of what is now The Original Factory Shop, before moving to Pendre and finally closing in the early 1980s.
I met Mani’s Son Gethin back in 2010 when I was exhibiting some work in the Guildhall Gallery in the town centre. The exhibition was part of a project about local chapels and their history and we chatted about his father who I had heard used to record various local chapel’s Cymanfa Ganu events (Choir festivals) direct to disc before the advent of tape recorders. He told me about how they had built the first radio in their village and how they placed the earpiece (no speakers in those days) in a large ceramic bowl and gathered around to listen, and how his mother was deeply suspicious of who and where the voices they heard were.
He returned later in the week bringing me a CD of recordings his father had made in local chapels, a vintage bag from the shop and a blank unused record (which has lived on my kitchen wall since).
Another local music shop no longer trading is Swales in Haverfordwest. Trading into the 90s I remember it was one of the best record shops in the area as well as selling instruments and sheet music too. Visit http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/swales.html for a great selection of photos from there. The founder and namesake Robert Joffre Swales, known as “Joffre”, was awarded an MBE in 1975 for his services to music in the town for over 50 years. As well as playing in a number of bands and teaching music he set up an instrument rental scheme at Swales, allowing those less well off members of the community the opportunity to enjoy learning and playing an instrument.
These last ones I know very little or nothing about, the Dales bag came (with a record in) from a charity shop in Fishguard I think, the others were gifts from my good friend Flo Fflach.
Valentines day is upon us and a shifting selection of romantic records has been in Bara Menyn Bakehouse for the last week or so…
A couple more variations on the resolution theme have been in Bara Menyn over this last week or so.
They will be a new selection in on Friday Jan 25th for Dydd Santes Dwynwen
The found of music 