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A circle in 12 parts: Virgo

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This year’s circle in 12 parts features guest artists chosen by zodiac sign, my guest for Virgo is Jay Hodges:

“I know you’ve seen the note. I know you know what it says. How did it come to this? It’s not my fault, I’m innocent! I didn’t want to do it! I’M A PERFECTIONIST!”.

Ok, ok, back to the beginning and how or why I got involved in all this despicable, unholy behavior. It all started quite innocently in ‘The Before Time’. A couple of visits to the pub and this guy invites me to take part in his New Musick project, I’m a little sceptical but I think ‘hey, just Roll With It‘. He’d found a brewery with extra special ales, delivered free, that we could drink in his home. What a process! Order beer, deliver beer, drink! True explorers, finding random new hops whenever they arose – FOUND HOPS, what an amazing project, I’m fully on board, totally committed. Then he starts drawing circles and all manner of shit happens.

The soundtrack was the start of it all, if we had just used my suggestion of Madonna’s Like a Virgin, her ‘magnum opus’, none of this would have happened. I tried telling him of her integrity, originality and dedication to her art, and the deep emotional content of such a seminal track, but all did was ramble, speaking in tongues, muttering things like; “commodification of music”, “corporate whore”, “selling sex”, strange meaningless sentences. For him the soundtrack would be a live performance, Analogous to the project, something to “sample the Hops and Skip the Juice“. Performance! Sampling! Things were beginning to get weird, his fluid performance was about to become binary and there were way too many binaries in this world; Love and Hate, Life And Death, Analog and Digital.

The Separation and the outlawing of performance should have put and end to this absurdity, but it just fueled his madness, A Perfect Storm, he was to take things to a new level – a full circle with 12 co-conspirators, he had a crew and they could remote. Why he decided to convince me to join up I don’t know, perhaps he felt sorry for me but I was in way over my head. I should have ran there and then but I was committed and guys like me when we commit, WE COMMIT! My part in this demonstrable ritual was to use our original sample plan to create a circle (again with the circles), analog to digital – an improvisation. Improvisation! How could I? It’s against my nature, I’M A PERFECTIONIST! But all he could say was “Hey man, let the computer do the work, this ‘aint no job, it’s a Vocation“. I was reeling, Twisted Sour, my mind recoiled back to simpler times and the Double IPA‘s of FOUND HOPS. Thats it! I would double down, Madonna to the power of 6. I would lure him into unfamiliar territory – a first – and from there bring him back from the brink. However I would also be in virgin territory.

It was during the performance as I was about to unleash the power of the prickly pop princess that he finally revealed himself, amid Wave After Wave of expertly crafted crushing reverberation and modulation – a transformation, a digital wizard, the circle complete, my plan was in tatters, I was lost, the madonna had fallen, there was no going back, BUT I’M A PERFECTIONIST!  That’s when I found the note, carefully placed only to be discovered at exactly the right moment, as the last fragments of reality dissolve. You’ve seen it, you know what it says! Those Dark, Stout, ominous letters rendering themselves onto my being

“LIFES A PITCH THEN YOU DELAY“

I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway and I know I can never go back but all I want to do is return to the pub where it all started and begin again, “like a virgin…Hey!… Fucked for the very first time”.

A circle in 12 parts: Cancer

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This year’s circle in 12 parts features guest artists chosen by zodiac sign, my guest for Cancer is Kathryn Campbell Dodd:

Home is where the haunt is

These days I’m pretty sceptical about astrology, but, in my younger years, I enthusiastically learned and absorbed the traits of my star sign. I think, perhaps, the quasi-scientific nature of astrology satisfies a deep desire within us to see ourselves objectively reflected and to catch a glimpse of our ‘true’ self. Sometimes I wonder whether we are so taken with this mirror to our character that we accept the reflection as the real. We confuse the given traits of our star sign with our own, ’Well, I’m a Cancer so of course I’m a nurturing, slightly over sensitive home lover’.

As above, so below is the credo of astrology. My celestial companion is the moon and I’ve been looking for her reflection in the stuff of my every day.

The ‘typical’ Cancerian feature that seems to have chimed with me consistently throughout my life is a preoccupation with home, and the things of the home. I’m particularly interested in the unhomely and the haunted home, the disturbance of the unfamiliar becoming manifest within our most intimate environment; the way that small disruptions in atmosphere and perception can make the familiar suddenly uncomfortable and alien.

I decided to choose just one record from Jacob’s collection to build sound for the piece, Ghosts by Japan, a piece that cultural theorist Mark Fisher cites in the title of his book Ghosts of My Life: writings on depression, hauntology and lost futures in which he describes its “…sense of enervated foreboding…”:

When the room is quiet, the daylight almost gone, it seems there’s something I should know….

Whilst I’ve been thinking about the work I wanted to make for this project, there have been disturbances at the threshold of my home. For a couple of months, a crow has been coming to knock the windows with its beak and ‘caw’ on the windowsills. Sometimes it comes with a companion who sits on the roof, sometimes it comes alone, but it always follows the same routine, four or five times a day, landing on the same two windowsills and performing specific routines. It’s the kind of encounter that is freighted with folklore and superstition. Whatever its intention, it feels portentous and significant.

During the timeframe of these avian encounters, I’ve also stepped into the last year of my fifth decade. I’m adjusting to a new sense of identity. What does it mean to be an old(er) woman in our culture? The hag, the wise woman, the grandmother, the elder…the overlooked, the unheard, the vulnerable, the marginalised. Where do I fit and who are my allies?

When the room is quiet, the crow and the crone are tapping at my windows in the moonlight.

“The word ‘haunt’ and all the derivations thereof may be one of the closest English words to the German ‘unheimlich’, whose polysemic connotations and etymological echoes Freud so assiduously, and so famously, unravelled in his essay on ‘The Uncanny’. Just as ‘German usage allows the familiar (das Heimliche, the’ homely’) to switch to its opposite, the uncanny (das Unheimliche, the ‘unhomely’)’ (Freud), so ‘haunt’ signifies both the dwelling-place, the domestic scene and that which invades or disturbs it. The OED lists one of the earliest meanings of the word ‘haunt’ as ‘to provide with a home, house.” Mark Fisher, k-punk.abstractdynamics.org

KCD July 2021

Circular Processes

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A visual remix

An echo of the audio remix process exploring ways of reusing and processing the visuals.
I remember trying a few databending techniques some years ago with little success, not sure what has changed and it did take a bit of effort, but this went wild!

A circle in 12 parts: Gemini

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This year’s circle in 12 parts features guest artists chosen by zodiac sign, my guest for Gemini is Ceri Owen-Jones:

“When Jake asked me to take part in this project, the first thing I looked into were the origins and myths of Gemini. At my friend Sue’s suggestion, I went from Latin to Greek (Castor & Pollux) and back to Gemini’s Babylonian origins in the Great Horse Twins, and the parallel Vedic tradition of the Twins, the Ashvins, which means the ‘possessors of Horse’. According to Joseph Campbell, the mastery of the Horse brought a new energy and vitality to the dawn of the Iron Age and its symbolism replaced that of the Bull.

There are many horse songs in traditional Welsh music. I chose to play & record a Ceredigion melody, Y Dau Farch. Y Dau Farch is a conversation between two horses, one old, one young, about their past and future, which feels perfect for Gemini, a sign with an emphasis on duality and communication. Keeping Gemini communication in mind, the albums that leapt out at me in Jake’s vinyl library catalogue were the Welsh language learning albums. I wanted to explore communication in a second language, the difficulties of learning and expressing oneself, how comprehension in certain registers and subtle expression can be problematic.

With what I now know is classic Gemini superficiality, I mis-read Jake’s guide to album choices. Once figured out, I was glad to see that amongst his base-line choices was The Planets by Holst and from this I liked an arrangement of ‘Mercury’ (ruling planet of Gemini) by Tomita, a fuzzy soft Moog version. Jake also pointed out that one of his Gemini readings by Melvin J Gunton and Brian Skinner was made in Canada, a great choice for a Canadian in Wales / a Cymro who grew up in Canada. The constant idea in my life is duality.

My birthchart has seven planets in Air signs as well as my Midheaven (I’m Air heavy!). To represent Air, I chose the tracks Air and Listening Wind by Talking Heads, Walking in the Air sung by Aled Jones, and The Dragon by Vangelis (the Dragon, especially in Chinese myth, being a creature of clouds and air and a potent symbol in Wales). I saw that Jake has two copies of this last record in his listing – found at Emlyn Antiques – one with a cover, and one without.

I added a Miles Davis album as we share a birthday. It was a choice between Dr. Jekyll and Decoy. Although the title Dr Jekyll seems appropriate to describe the duality of Gemini, I veered off with the Decoy as the feel of the music seemed good for the flightiness of the ruling planet Mercury. This album was given to Jake by our great friend Peter Stevenson.

In medieval music, each modal scale was associated with a planet. Mercury was hypo-phrygian and as one of Gemini’s characteristics is the enjoyment of improvisation and the ability to adapt easily, I thought I would improvise variations on this mode based on the Welsh melodies Y March Glas and Triban y Cathreiwr (for the Ox in me).

Thinking of form: moving from calm to frenetic is the two parts, yin and yang, of Gemini. This will be based on feel, and collaborating with Jake. It’ll just have to happen as it happens.

Dragons swirl amongst the clouds. The heartsease, Viola tricolor, with its zygomorphic flowers, are like the Twins. A Tibetan singing bowl to clear the space and air, along with gifts given to me and Elsa (musical Twins) from Jake, completes the Circle.

I paired this with Taliesin of the Shining Brow: Canu y Gwynt; a riddle of the Wind.”

Ceri’s record selection: Talking Heads – Air; Talking Heads – Listening Wind; Aled Jones – Walking in the Air; Disciau Dysgu Difyr – Adar; Miles Davis – Decoy; BBC Radio – Welsh for Beginners; Cwrs Cymraeg llafar;

A circle in 12 parts: Aries

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This year’s circle in 12 parts features guest artists chosen by zodiac sign, my first guest for Aries is Rowan O’Neill:

“When first asked to take part in this project my immedate thought was to interrogate Jacob’s record databases looking for songs and music related to sheep or defaid.  This resulted in a selection of records that juxtaposed ram and lamb; safe grazing or being rounded up and counting your blessings instead of sheep.


Jacob was also keen to include some kind of live intervention in the mix.  I was not sure what this would be but as aries season got under way in March I began reading Allen Raine’s novel A Welsh Singer (1897).  I have been looking at the work of Allen Raine as part of a mentored Research and Development Project with creative agency Addo.    The novel charts the rise of the heroine from a poor orphan to local eistedddfod winner, then circus performer in London and finally an opera singer on the European stage.  The first sentence of the novel references a March morning and a sheep that has fallen off a cliff to its death where it now lies at the bottom, ‘as dead as a red herring’.  


My original idea for my Allen Raine project had been to base an opera on her later novel, Queen of the Rushes, set during the 1904 Welsh Revival.  Though I had read the novel some years ago I had quite forgotten that the central character of this work is in fact, for most of the novel, mute.  She does however eventually regain her speech and at this moment, overcome with emotion, she breathes a, ‘prayer of gratitude, in words that no longer died upon her tongue, but reached her ears in the music of the human voice.’


As a young girl I competed at an Eisteddfod in Aberporth performing a song called Y Ddafad Gorniog. The opening lyrics are etched in my memory but I do not completely recall the tune.  I have sung the tune as I remember it with a simple piano accompaniment. Working it out I started singing Baa Baa Black Sheep too and recorded this with concertina which I began learning to play last year.  


I worked with Jacob in 2020 on a music project working with young carers using an app called Loopy HD.  For this aries mix I made a couple of vocal pieces with Loopy HD that riff on both the folk tunes/songs and the, ‘music of the human voice’.  The twelve loops mirror perhaps the twelve parts of the zodiac circle and the loops of Jacob’s records.
The horned ram’s head is a souvenir from the farm I grew up on, Rhos-y-Gadair Uchaf, at the end of a lane in Felinwynt.”
https://www.rowanoneill.com/

Vinyl records used in the mix were Holst’s ‘Mars’ played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra & the L.A. Philharmonic, as well as reinterpretations by Tomita and by Kevin Peek on ‘Beyond the Planets’.
Other records in the mix: Roger Christian – Discover yourself through Astrology; John Dankworth – The Zodiac Variations; Cosmos – Your Stars for 1968; Norrie Paramour Orchestra – The Zodiac Suite; Cannonball Adderley presents – Soul Zodiac; Cosmic Sounds – The Zodiac

Records chosen by Rowan: London Symphony Orchestra – Sheep May Safely Graze; Hogia Llandegai – Defaid William Morgan; Jac a Wil – Y Ddafad Golledig; Roy Buchanan – I’m a Ram; Stories of Larry the Lamb in Toytown; Bing Crosby – Count Your Blessings instead of Sheep;

Other contributions from Rowan included readings of text:

Allen Raine, Queen of the Rushes (1906), Chapter 8 ‘Maldraeth’
Allen Raine, A Welsh Singer (1897), Chapter 1, Abersethin Slopes

folk songs:
Bah Bah Black Sheep
Mae gen i ddafad gorniog

Parameters of a Circle

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Guests are invited to contribute by –

  • Sending an image of their birth chart – or birth data and I will draw a chart up
  • Selecting vinyl records from my collection – they can be anything*
  • Sending audio or video recordings
  • Joining live on the day via Zoom (or in person when Covid restrictions allow)
  • Sending text – some for the blog post
  • Suggesting vinyl record combinations or playlist/performance structure

*there are a number of preselected records for each sign. These include the ruling planet’s theme from the different versions of Holst’s planets, and relevant tracks from a collection Astrology records.

Audio works are created live with the guest contributions. Video is composed of recordings from the live performance, and images of both guest and my birth chart, combined with animation created from images of my mother’s crystal ball and textural videos connected to the zodiac sign’s element. The final duration will be approximately 30min.