(Welsh Song Collection)
I found a lot of old Welsh 7inch 45s in the Sense charity shop the other day, couldn’t resist for 50p each..more to come..
Geraint “Busker” Jones from Pentrecwrt – a regular on the streets of West Wales. As seen on TV!
I do like a record with a dog on the cover
https://thefoundofmusic.co.uk/2023/09/19/digital-analog-dogs/
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.
Another show opening tomorrow in Swansea is showing video work created with Kathryn Campbell Dodd as part of her Cragen Beca project.
Read more here cragenbeca.co.uk
Over the last year, while working with Maynard and Afon,
I have limited my time on the project to when the sun is passing through one of the 3 water signs and taken the mode of each as a guide to consider and collect different kinds of material.
The process began with a walk down the river Pibydd with the sun in the sign of Cancer. The size and nature of the river seemed to express something of the cardinal mode.
While the sun was moving through Scorpio in 2023 we walked in the woods around Fynnone, perhaps Pluto was watching. The still deep waters of the lake inspired an idea to POOL a collection of sounds and I invited the other Afon artists to select vinyl from my collection to become a resource for a new improvised mix.
With the Sun in Pisces this year I spent some time with the confluence of the river Mwldan into the Teifi and the merging of Nant Duad and Nant Hafren near Castell Henllys. I gathered some material and had an idea to MERGE, to explore ways of bringing together different sound making practices.
When the sun returned to Cancer I returned to MERGE and also looked closer to home to explore the Mwldan in more detail. Taith Afon Mwldan was the result and started to explore ideas of containment and control.
During my time with Afon this November the Sun will be in Scorpio. I plan to explore and record some of the hidden parts of the river. To bring together material gathered over the last year and explore its potential once contained and displaced
More works and posts https://thefoundofmusic.co.uk/?s=afon
The river Mwldan is a tributary to the Teifi in the town of Aberteifi / Cardigan in west Wales. Starting in the north it runs the length of the town on the western side before joining the Teifi a little way downstream from the old bridge.
Historically the Mwldan was an important part of the industry of the town powering mills along it’s journey before reaching town and being put to use by a variety of industries and traders over the years. These days it is largely overlooked and unseen but it continues to provide a slender and valuable channel of natural habitat for all kinds of wildlife.
I recorded with a hydrophone on all of the crossing points of the Mwldan, edited and layered in the soundtrack of the video above to include the machine noise and mechanics of handling and movement, blending the natural and man made sounds to reflect the natural and unnatural course of the river.
I was recently watching a pair of swans on the Teifi. They swam into the culvert entrance on the Teifi and went under the car park to emerge onto the Mwldan a couple of minutes later. A strange moment walking across the car park knowing there were swans swimming underneath!
Walking upstream the next crossing is the footbridge at Lower Mwldan which used to be a drawbridge. ‘The Old Sail Loft’ buildings have been used for various things over the years, storage for a long time and a Ceredigion Council run training centre for a while before its recent change to arts space and print studios.
After the footbridge the river Mwldan disappears from sight as it runs behind what was once a timber yard and then storage for Furney’s Amusements. For quite a while the open sided sheds could be seen through the gates, full of old fruit machines, pool tables and the like. When the yard changed hands some years ago they sold off all that, I regret not buying the boxes of old jukebox records still marked up with the pubs they had been in.
As we move further upstream the terrace continues to obscure the river before the culvert begins at the back of the old amusement arcade and the river opens up again just before Bath House Rd Bridge.
Moving further upstream the river has 2 more bridges in quick succession for yet another car park and access to Mwldan buildings.
From there the Mwldan meanders through a low lying area with no public access before the final bridge in town on Gwbert rd.
The Pilgrim’s Process started in 2004 and maybe never really ended… (read more here).
Primarily a visual project to accompany Vinyl Altar, a live turntable improvisation performance project exploring religious recordings on vinyl, it also includes a number of videos with fixed soundtracks. These 2 recent videos are made live with live modular synths and Resolume VJ software.
The CD artwork for Vinyl Altar links through to mp3 downloads of the recordings from that disc, recorded in 2005. The film below that was an edit from a much longer work created in 2006 with a broken camera, my first post on the then new Youtube!
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
A great day in Aberystwyth Arts centre for the Aberetwm celebrations. Some lovely conversations with new and old friends. Thanks to everyone who came along and joined in and thanks to Marc and Becca for having us there!
I started off the sounds of the day with recordings made on Aberystwyth beach, the waves led us up onto the prom where voices and gulls joined in with some short loops of cello, bass and viol from the lovely Sianed Jones who’s loopstation I inherited full of memories.
From there we heard the call of Penglais woods where the rich and lively birdsong merged with voices and music from the Arts Centre. The voice of Peter Stevenson and music from Ailsa Mair Hughes, recorded during the Flora exhibition in 2017, evokes and describes the geographic and botanical world of Penglais hill as experienced by John Salter in the 19th Century before being submerged in the drones and loops from vinyl records connected to Aberystwyth.
The Vinyl Mycelium connections resonate, ogham trees adding new layers of connection reaching out to both past and future. Traditional instrumental sounds from Deuair bring us back to the present and merge with loops of the past – a stream begins to flow.
Above is a horoscope chartwheel for the day in Aberystwyth – this recurs in the live visual mix, rotating and merging with another more artistic impression of the chart drawn up for my collaboration with Jay and Keryl Hodges and the third circle.
The space was also inhabited by the mysterious figure of the mushroom man tending his pods and silently connecting us to a world beyond.
4 photos above by Keryl Hodges https://www.instagram.com/littleappleseed/
4 photos below by Sean Vicary https://www.seanvicary.com
4 photos below by Jo Shapland https://www.instagram.com/joshapland
A 6hr performance/sound installation as part of Aberystwyth Arts Centre’s 50th birthday celebration.
We will be in the Arts Centre theatre from 12pm – 6pm on Monday 8th May.
Mycelium Manifestation
Sounds of Penglais emerge from the sea.
Local voices resonate and repeat creating new forests of potential where past and future coincide.
Fragments of the past loop, crackle, hiss and drone from a collection of audio equipment, old record players and vinyl records.
A curious figure (created by Dominic Saha) investigates how nature can adopt its persona by abstracting the sentient qualities found in fungus. He will inhabit the character of Mushroom Man, the protector of curious giant seed pods whose mysterious presence is amplified and animated by the shifting sound score transforming the ritual caretaking into something otherworldly that conveys a converging of something both ancient and futuristic.
Whittaker & friends will manifest to channel the spirit of the mycelium connecting the trees, embracing Venus to explore and connect with the spring energy of Taurus to create a ritualistic soundscape for modern times.
Old and new combine to explore memory, music, repetition, ritual and function.
You are invited to join us in a ritual sound making experiment.
Contribute and connect with voice and vinyl records to conjure a new lost forest world made from symbols of the past to connect with the future.
A Forest of Words – Find out your celtic zodiac tree and record your tree name to help grow a forest, who knows maybe we’ll summon some Dryads
Vinyl Mycelium – Browse a collection of vinyl connected to Aberystwyth and select tracks for the mix. From Datblygu to George Melly, to Cor Meibion Aberystwyth via Laurie Anderson to The Sound of Music and Cor Cantre Gwaelod, the connections are there to be discovered.
The fourth circle is upon us.
Circular ramblings.
As I start another circle in 12 parts I want to say again just how grateful I am for the time and contributions of all my guests over the last 2 years. I’ve really enjoyed the opportunities and challenges it’s raised.
Circles, cycles, endings and beginnings.
When I started in 2020 it was with an idea of creating and posting monthly on the the same date each year, that it would become a monthly and annual ritual act. Art, ritual and magic share so much.
Alongside the monthly mix my studio time is now guided by the Sun’s movement through the zodiac signs, images and vinyl selected to compliment and explore the qualities of the sign, its element and planetary ruler.
The third circle brought a number of new ideas to the project and is where the ideas and interactions consolidate as a social ritual.
All live mixes – In January 2022 I bought some VJ software and started to explore using that during the performances instead of editing post. Wherever possible my guests have joined me physically in the studio and both visual and audio mixes have been improvised live with some mixed results! When my guest was remote, I recorded the audio mix with them over the web live, I then took the live audio and the camera recordings along with any video clips we decided on and used them as the material for a live visual mix.
Modular Synths – I started playing with VCV Rack, a virtual eurorack synthesiser back in August 2021 and by the time I started the 3rd circle had invested in some hardware. I added the Make Noise Strega, the 0Coast and 0Control in February 2022 and over the following months started to use them in the mixes if it felt appropriate. The first mix of the third circle for Aries 2022 with Elsa Davies was the first time they were included.
Sometime around the same time I started playing more regularly with 2 of my previous guests, Jay and Keryl Hodges, continuing the process of selecting and playing records according to zodiac sign and using the sign’s element and planetary rulers to influence the visual material.
Perhaps the years and the different approaches can be seen as echoes of the astrological houses or modal qualities –
1 – The principal act – A monthly vinyl mix
2 – Consolidation and continuation – Inviting guests to participate continuing a process and reiterating the method
3 – Extension and inclusion – Extending and experimenting with more processes to introduce more liveness
The Fourth Circle
I see the fourth circle as 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 and cardinal water. 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. The first of these was to take place on the spring equinox but unfortunately I was too unwell to do it, I’m still not sure what that means and how it affects the whole…
The found of music 