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Spheric resonances / eggflutes
Last September, when social contact was still a desert landscape, Ecka Mordecai cycled to my home to present me with a gift of eggflutes. To describe them (only) as musical instruments would be to reduce them to a functionality that … Continue reading
Posted in instrumentality, live sound, Uncategorized, writing sound
Tagged Cafe Oto, David Toop, Ecka Mordecai, eggflutes, Lucie Stepankova, Peter Sloterdijk
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In the Cave of Sound
“To him who is a cave in which my shout echoes.” Victor Segalen, from Stèles (1912). How was it, and when was it, that I encountered Victor Segalen’s peculiar little novel, Dans Un Monde Sonore, published in 1907? Probably when … Continue reading
head peelers
Extracts from a collaborative text written by David Toop and Marie Roux, published in Marie Roux’s photobook, The Head Peelers, published in an edition of 40, 2021. A wandering adventure was my starting point. This is what I find exciting. … Continue reading
on&on&on&on: Daniel Blumberg
“And now he was playing, alas, the piano,” the first sentence of Robert Walser’s short prose text written in 1925, “making it sound like a deep and intimate promise, which isn’t at all the way to start a novel.” An … Continue reading
Posted in instrumentality, Uncategorized
Tagged Daniel Blumber, Robert Walser, Ute Kanngiesser
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Who will go mad with me
We were on Dartmoor, Brent Fore Hill at Ball Gate to be exact. The date was the 29th July, 1971, though there was little evidence of summer to be heard in the howling wind. During the same year I was … Continue reading
FLAT TIME/sounding: the absent desire object
A question to be asked: why compose for improvisers? Questions are directed at time: what are the possibilities for articulating time? Improvisations splinter time. Hit a sheet of glass with a hammer and if the tap achieves the right velocity … Continue reading
Why do we have to be quiet tonight: Christian Marclay’s Everyday
Everyday, a struggle with language, with time. Just to say something simple: on Saturday night I went to a concert, but to see it, to hear it? What we have learned from gender and language is that these problems are … Continue reading
falling under a charm: Rie Nakajima
Café Oto, London, 22 August 2012, after 9.00pm: a warm night; the place is quite full. A low table, facing the stage area. Sometimes children lay out old and unwanted toys on the pavement, sit together and hope to sell … Continue reading
to rush down
“Any old wood will do,” wrote Henri Michaux in 1949. The drum needed no skin. Just as long as your whole life could be concentrated into the impact of fingers, hand, fast, faster, less fast, slowly, very slowly. Silence was … Continue reading
Posted in into the maelstrom, Uncategorized
Tagged auscultate, Henri Michaux, music, play with sound, play with sounds
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mouth of shadows
Andre Masson: Automatic Drawing (1920s) “she speaks to me a language so soft that at first I do not understand . . .” (Aimé Césaire, Son of Thunder, 1948) “I have always wondered why automatic writing has not been invoked … Continue reading
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