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.
As part of the Annwn / Otherworlds exhibition in the Old Sail Loft last week we set up a space to play live with my video projections in the basement. The performance went on through the evening exhibition opening, with each of us playing different parts, drifting in and out over a few hours. The extract above is from the last section where we condensed most of the processes into a manageable 15minutes.
The video projections were of ‘Otherworlds’, a video made from filming clips of trees reflecting in puddles seen on walks around the local area over the last 2 or 3 years.
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
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.
In the 18th and 19th century Cardigan was a busy port town, bringing trade and commerce of all kinds. I have been told that as a connecting street between the busy port and trading area of Lower Mwldan and High Street, Eben’s lane became the place for a very particular kind of trade.
The sign of Leo is ruled by the Sun so I found a selection of sun themed tracks to use including the Sunrise and Sunset movements from Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite, and Sunrise from both Also Sprach Zarathustra and Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss.
An improvised turntable mix for Taurus with various versions of Venus (ruler of Taurus) from Holst’s planet suite and a spoken word flexidisc of Madame Francesca amongst other things (see below).
FLOW – A morning stream of sonic interactions, river songs and vinyl.
Collective connective musical memories emerge from an assemblage of old record players, vinyl records, local recordings and sound pictures.
FLOW seeks to connect people and places through a process of listening, participation and response.
I wanted to create a work that followed the river Teifi’s journey, taking a sonic walk along the river through field recordings made between my home town of Aberteifi and the festival, while drawing on local recordings of mine from previous projects based on the river (Deuair & Peter Stevenson – The Talking Tree), vinyl records referring to the river and other places on it’s route (Vernon a Gwynfor – Taith Teifi), and recordings of my late friend Lou who loved the river and was inspired to write a number of songs relating to it. I walked along the river Teifi, reflecting on its journey and mine, both geographically and temporally. Recording along the way, gathering a variety of sounds – the water, the trees, the wildlife and myself in the landscape.
I used to walk the footpath along the river with Lou talking and listening and I remembered a song she wrote called ‘Bright Rivers’ and thought perhaps to use that in some way. While looking for that I found a song simply titled ‘The River’ in an archived folder labelled 11 early tracks. It was from Lou’s first ever demo recording session, recorded at Fflach studios, Cardigan in around 1992. Simple, a bit rough, and unique those recordings are the only ones with Lou playing her own guitar accompaniment. It has an energy that reflects her youthfulness and her passion for singing and writing songs. There was also a version of ‘Moon River’ with Katherine Crowe, recorded in Cardigan with Jon Turner at Backbedroom studios in around 1998, it’s particularly poignant as both Jon and Kathryn have also died in the last 10 years.
Through this the work took on a theme of loss, of constant change, movement and personal reflection. Forming as the body of source material grew, a sequence of sounds started to suggest itself. Starting with local recordings and those personal memories and sounds, the idea was that it would becoming more national and collective before reaching out toward international and universal.
Starting the work with a precomposed track made from field recordings and my local recordings, for about 10 minutes it played through the local area towards a collection of records. The records were selected using my database, searching for words connected to rivers – river, stream, brook, afon, creek, nant etc. and names of rivers – Thames, Tyne, Avon, Teifi, Usk, Severn, Mississippi, Colorado, Niagara, Nile, Danube etc. Others were selected because they had rivers on the cover (see below and previous posts).
From this eclectic collection of vinyl I selected and mixed a few choice bits before allowing the work to become less structured and deliberate, embracing random loops from the collection. At about 20 minutes I opened up the mix to the audience and invited them to come and join in the selection and playing of the records for the remaining period.
All the while the room was lit in one corner by projected video of water reflections and ripples of streams, a series of 3 screens with headphones played video of previous works made on the Teifi, Wye and Severn. One included new videos made for the festival, 3 vinyl records playing videos, 2 filmed playing in the locations pictured on their sleeves (Cwm Allt Cafan & Cenarth) and one the Vernon a Gwynfor song ‘Taith Teifi’ playing in the studio. Another screen showed ‘Sometimes I live by a lake’, a slideshow of photographs taken during my years living in Llechryd, mostly looking out towards the river and Abercych. Adjacent to the installation of turntables and screens was a stream of vinyl records pooling then winding across the floor, inviting careful steps to explore its journey through the space.
Vinyl stream – Photo by Andrew Filmer
The process and legacy of the work has, for me, created a keen sense of connection to the river and the surrounding area, a feeling of being part of the artistic continuum existing in the teifi valley. A community and practice connecting us all both locally and to the wider cultural landscape.
The following were either shown in the space during the installation or were used in the composition.
Thinking on rivers as a theme I also remembered one of the last poems written by my Mum during her last year, a difficult but rich time of reflection filled with creativity and kindness. https://lizwhittaker.wordpress.com/more/the-dancer-on-the-river-of-light/
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
A collection of vinyl first shown in Oriel Blodau Bach earlier this year.
Born near Llandysul at Christmas in 1766, Christmas Evans grew up in Bwlchog, in the parish of Llanfihangel-ar-Arth and went on to become one of the most well known and influential preachers in Wales.
“Christmas Evans (1766-1838) was described by D. M. Lloyd-Jones as ‘the greatest preacher that the Baptists have ever had in Great Britain’. This remarkable one-eyed Welshman came from humble beginnings to exercise powerful preaching ministries throughout Wales..”(1)
The collection of sleeves with their different designs attest to his status and continued popularity as a preacher, receiving several re-issues on the Qualiton label. The sermon itself was first delivered on July 1st 1835 in Bangor and the recording is of Rev. Jubilee Young some 118 years after Christmas Evans’ death.
As well as the covers on display there are a number of audio/video works using the records
(1) ‘Christmas Evans – No Ordinary Preacher’
https://www.dayone.co.uk/products/christmas-evans-no-ordinary-preacher
The found of music 