The Anyplace Silk Screening studio has been recognised by Leichhardt Council as a valuable social and artistic resource in the local area, and awarded funding as part of Leichhardt Council’s Community Grants programme.

To celebrate studio co-ordinator, Carizza Teague, is hosting a series of workshops for those wanting to learn new skills, or brush up on those techniques that have been gathering dust. Further details of the next workshop can be found here.

Anyplace residents Astral People and Sydney’s Yes Please records have announced a huge festival, OutsideIn for November. Over three stages at The Factory Theatre, some of the finest and most exciting Australian and International musicians will present their genre-skewing wares, for many the first time in Australia.

Goodgod Small Club have also been pulled in to curate what is being described as a “tropically luxurious outdoor side-stage with a roster of foot tappin’, head swirling, booty popping goodness”. Who’d miss it?

First Announcement: SMOKE DZA (USA) / AFRICA HITECH (AUS/UK) / HTRK (AUS/UK) / SHIGETO (US) / OLIVER TANK / FLUME / JESSE BOYKINS III (US) / MELO-X (US) / COLLARBONES / THRUPENCE / POLOGRAPHIA / DRO CAREY

Serial Space & Anyplace Projects have three studios to fill in Rozelle. The studios are available now, and residencies will continue until mid July.
Applications are accepted from individuals, OR groups of people who would like to share a studio. Costs will be divided among shared-residents.
Successful applications will be required to pay a $100 security bond in addition to $20/week rent.
Get your applications in by COB, Tuesday 10th of April – applicants will be notified of their success or otherwise within the week.

For more information & how to apply, see Facebook.

For a full archive of past psh.live recordings and discussions see www.anyplaceprojects.com/psh-live/

Denley and Singh:
Psh.live Denley and Singh by psh.live November

Sam Pettigrew:
Psh.live Sam Pettigrew by psh.live November

Altman and Brooks:
Psh.live Altman and Brooks by psh.live November

Romy: Thanks everyone for coming today, and thanks for the wonderful performances. I guess it would be pretty safe to say that you guys are all quite closely affiliated with the Now Now. I was wondering how important or how influential that is to your practice and how your practice has changed the more you’ve been involved with the community?

Monica: Go Jim!

Jim: Go Mon!

Monica: Jim has been in the Now Now before any of us…

Jim: You’ve been involved for 35 years.

*laughs

Monica: Excuse me?! I’m 28!

*laughs

Romy: What sort of thing were you doing before, Jim?

Jim: There was no life before the Now Now. It was just a void. I don’t think time existed. I mean, there was heaps of stuff happening. What is Music? Festival was probably at that stage a much more inclusive event. It kind of became a bit more exclusive by 2000 and there were a lot more international artists. In fact it became this touring international event in the late 90s early 2000s. It’s first years in Sydney… it was a ten week festival with shows every Monday night at the Harbourside Brasserie which is on Pier One in Sydney just underneath the bridge. It was just all local crazies. Crazy bands, all sorts of crazy people. There were the Mu Mesons who were a band full of psychiatric patients and their nurse who used to do gigs. So in the early days that was incredibly inclusive and we used to do lots of performances with every musician in Sydney who wanted to be involved whether they were technically experimentalists or not. So in the early 90s I think it was that really inclusive thing. And then as the festival continued to develop it became more exclusive. And then just out of the blue Clayton Thomas, who I didn’t know, goes ‘We’re going to have a festival’ so then something else started which was more grass roots, so I think there’s always got to be, in any city where there’s a bunch of people interested in doing stuff, there’s got to be some sort of grass roots event.

Romy: So there was always something pulling everyone together?

Jim: By the time Clayton said ‘I think there needs to be a festival’ there was a bit of a void, because What Is Music? had become a bit more inclusive. That’s my theory.

Monica: What year was this roughly?

Jim: Oh it was about 1956. No.

Monica: Was it the 80s or 90s?

Jim: It was the late nineties. In maybe 99 or 98 What Is Music? was like 10 days in Sydney and 10 days in Melbourne and gigs in Brisbane. It was a big event and there was Finez and Peter Rehberg, quite big touring international experimentalists, all coming out here to get a bit of warmth during the European winter. So your chances of getting a gig at that festival plummeted if you were a local.

Monica: Like what Geoff was saying in New Zealand, that they tried to put on an international festival and it ended up being all international acts and no New Zealanders.

Jim: mmm, I think that happens in a lot of towns. And there’s all this money for, especially Europeans, to come here. So you can get a bunch of internationals.

Laura: So the Now Now is a place for people who don’t necessarily play very often or are looking for a place to start broadening their network of collaborators, a place for them to start.

Sam: Maybe. But maybe it’s places like this and Sound Series that are doing that, even more than Now Now is at this point.

Laura: But I mean at the beginning of the Now Now…

Sam: I think Jim’s point of there always having to be something grass roots, now the Now Now isn’t necessarily a grass roots organisation. And I think that’s ok, because I think in order to have something grass roots you’ve got to have something that’s not grass roots. It’s not like there is an either/or situation going on. But if everyone is inclusive and cooperative… like the community is not dictated by separate organisations, it’s a community. I think that’s the important thing.

Romy: And your set Sam, it seemed to be influenced by aspects of the Now Now but also other personal interests. I know that you’re interested in performance art, is that where today came from?

Sam: Yeah. Well, the solo set is something I’ve been working on that’s not necessarily music or theatre, it’s something that I’m interested in doing at this point and that’s why I do it.

Romy: Yeah, so is it just, kind of, fun? Or…

Sam: Well it’s definitely fun… but I do put a lot of thought into it, and try to make it look like there’s not a lot of thought in it, which is difficult. I don’t know, it’s just a path that I’m trying to follow that’s running simultaneously along different lines of interest. And I’m bringing it back to some kind of enjoyment too. I don’t know, less serious. I’m interested in not being so serious about everything. Sometimes.

Romy: More playful?

Sam: Yeah.

Laura: You told me the other day that you were interested in doing a performance like that in front of musicians, as opposed to performance artists or actors or dancers or movers.

Sam: Yeah I want to get a gig in a theatre, in front of theatre-makers because I think the criteria that you would be judged by is quite different, and that would be interesting. Because I kind of see it as music, as a song, because it’s composed and it has a structure, but I don’t know how other people see it.

Monica: Reminds me heaps of New Treaty Militia and Gerard, maybe as a result of having been exposed to that and just applying that shit to what you were doing.

Sam: I don’t know New Treaty Militia, and I only know Gerard from playing trombone.

Monica: You know, New Treaty Militia, when we played at the Long Hall? First night we were there?

Sam: Oh. Oh yeah. Those guys. You’re still stuck in New Zealand Mon.

Monica: No but they’re people who are not necessarily ‘transcending’ but hybridizing performance, music, dance to just be performance. And saying something that’s kind of interesting whilst at the same time employing a whole lot of faculties, just to see what they can do with it. Instead of going ‘this is strictly this, this is strictly that,’ blah blah. Like with the interjections of what was coming off your computer. The tracks, the streamers, the clothes changes.

Sam: It kind of comes from, there’s a language of performance art. Alt-performance art or whatever the fuck that is. Just like there’s a language of improvised music and there’s a language of… I don’t know. Maybe not language but vernacular.

Monica: Palette?

Sam: Yeah, different systems. And I mean, you just engage in that, in different ways.

Romy: Are you trying to challenge those systems?

Sam: I don’t think so. I mean, the shit that I’m doing is shit that was being done in 60s and then in the 70s then in the 80s then in the 90s. And then is being done now. And I’m not challenging anyone really, I’m just exploring something that’s for me to explore. Because I don’t want to challenge people.

Romy: And Mon and Laura, you quite often play with another… is it Magda Mayas? Is your duo at all similar to the trio?

Laura: In ways, yes. But in many ways, no.

Monica: Yeah we end up being seen a lot in that trio as one instrument, or a two-part unit. So my idea of Great Waitress is that as well as being a trio, it’s a duo, because it’s me and Laura who play together, and have been playing together for quite some time, as one unit kind of.

Laura: People that see us or listen to the recordings often comment and say oh you and Monica often play together, we can tell. And we have.

Romy: Yeah I noticed it was hard to tell sometimes where the sound was coming from. It was quite cohesive.

Laura: Yeah I think you can tell that we’ve been practicing a lot in that spectrum with that same breathiness. When Magda plays with us she plays piano, grand piano. And it’s a really huge sound.

Romy: But you also have other ensembles that you work with? And solo stuff? Is that right?

Laura: I don’t do solo stuff, performance-wise. But yeah, there’s a few other groups and Mon plays with Jim and Rishin and Sam. And we all play in the Splinter Orchestra.

Romy: Has anyone else got any questions for any of the performers?

Liam: In Jim and Rishin’s performance I was noticing the materials Jim was using to prepare his instrument. To me they were quite funny, seeing a flailing long balloon that’s bright yellow and a green mouthpiece. And then obviously Sam’s performance was quite humorous too. When you’re thinking of the materials your using to prepare your instrument are you thinking materially or is it purely sound? Are you aware that someone might see the balloon and think it’s quite funny, and is that something you appreciate or are you thinking purely ‘this will make this particular sound’?

Jim: I did a gig last year where I traveled all the way to Sweden and I got the train down to… I can’t even remember the name of the place, but it’s the equivalent of Geelong or somewhere in Sweden. And it was a blizzard, and I left the railway station, and there were no cabs to the place so I had to walk about a kilometre through the blizzard dragging my bag through the snow. And the wheels don’t really work so you just drag snow. So I got there exhausted, having been on an airplane for 24 hours. And then I had this concert, which was an improvised music event in the equivalent of Geelong so I expected about five or fifteen people to come along. And there was about sixty people there, but most of them were young teenagers. So some music teacher brought the entire music school. So I was just doing my schtick and they just laughed, the whole way through. And I think that’s fine, if people think it’s funny – cool. It doesn’t worry me. You can’t legislate for what people find funny or not funny. But I don’t think I’m particularly interested in whether it’s a bright yellow balloon or an orange one, but then I’d also be stupid if I said I wasn’t aware of those things, because I’ve done gigs like that where it is obviously really important and funny what colour balloon I use and some of the sounds are really stupid. The rubber itself, it’s hardly the richest… it’s not like a beautiful wooden double bass producing all those beautiful rich sounds that we heard this afternoon. So yeah I think it’s something that a performer should be aware of what the audience makes of it but personally that’s not what interests me. I use the balloon and that silly mouthpiece because of the sounds. I really am interested in those sounds. And the balloon in particular comes out of my interest in flute music. And so if I listen to some flute music from around the world some of the stuff I really dig is from the Amazon. And the flutes there, they never have a fundamental note so it’s always this sort of spectral breaking up of the harmonic series. So as soon as I worked with the balloon I discovered that when you pinch it you kind of produce a flute sound which is completely spectral. So that’s my main interest, the sound.

Liam: The closest reference point I could pick from sounds I was familiar with was electronic and magnetic radio interference which obviously covers a broad… it’s not a singular note, it’s usually a broad thing. And I just thought that was a funny juxtaposition of the balloon and these otherworldly, bizarre, electronic, sci fi sounds. But just picking up on you characterising some sound as stupid, I was noticing with Rishin you were moving between dark and serious tones and then just blowing raspberries with your mouth only. In the performance, when do you decide to go one way or another? Is it just off the cuff or…? How do you navigate between these two kind of polar sounds? From blowing raspberries to something dark and sinister and difficult to categorise?

Rishin: I guess they’re on the same spectrum. So from going to one end to the other end is just all the sounds that my body can make, they’re all legitimate. I wouldn’t think to do something and then do something. Like, do something that sounds like this and then juxtapose it with something that sounds like this. If I’m playing really badly then I would try and do that, to trigger some sort of music.

Laura: I guess it’s just an extension of your trombone playing, that [raspberry] action. Like you do it with the trombone and without the trombone. It’s kind of the same, could even be the same breath. Even with Jim the balloon isn’t necessarily an addition or a separate thing from the saxophone, it’s an extension of the saxophone.

Jim: A very expensive part of my saxophone too.

*laughs

Laura: How many balloons do you go through?

Jim: It’s only one balloon per session really. The saliva gets inside and then they’re useless.

Reuben Derrick: In New Zealand I remember you saying to me after your performance that you were having trouble with your balloon.

*laughs

Jim: Yep. I’ve got to the stage where I’m more particular about my balloons than I am with my reeds. Which is pretty worrying.

*laughs

Monica: You’ve got to find stockists around the globe that will sell you this particular kind of balloon.

Laura: Get sponsored.

Jim: These balloons are reasonably easy to find.

Audience: Have you ever carried them on in your hand luggage and been asked about them?

Jim: When I was going to Frankfurt airport recently I was asked by the security guards to play, and then I was thinking shall I do the balloon or not?

*laughs

Jim: And then I thought no forget it, just play it normally.

Laura: Were they wondering what you were doing with a saxophone?

Jim: I don’t know why they do that but often they ask people to play.

Monica: Isn’t this what happened to Ornette Coleman before he got arrested?

Laura: Happened to Jon Rose with his nine string cello or something.

Sam: So Denley and Singh…

*laughs

Sam: You guys haven’t done many performances as a duo before.

Jim: We’ve never.

Sam: Never performed as a duo before, but you perform together in another band. Do you approach it differently as a duo?

Rishin: Yes.

Monica: They’re even wearing the same thing today.

Jim: I’ve got improv boots on.

Rishin: I’ve just got regular boots on. Not cool enough for improv boots yet.

Sam: Because I was listening and thinking the way you’re working with extended breath is different to the way you play in Embedded. The phrasing of the duo, and pitch choice, is a much different beast. When Mon and I play with you do you feel like you can’t do these long breaths?

Rishin: I feel the opposite, I always want to play less. But when I play with Jim I’m feeling, whether musically or extra-musically, that I should play more.

Sam: Yeah you played quite a lot more than you normally do.

Rishin: Yeah whereas in Embedded I would feel more comfortable with not playing.

Laura: Is that because there are half as many people?

Rishin: I think so, but also no because I would be happy for less sound no matter how many people there are. But I think extra-musically because I’m sitting next to Jim it’s like ok… but also pre-guessing what will happen, what sounds are going to happen. So I feel like I’ve got to do this other thing to make that sound work with what I’m going to do. Does that make sense? What we were talking about the other day, about parallel.

Sam: Parallel?

Laura: As opposed to interacting a lot, constant lines going independently but also aware of each other.

Rishin: Yeah, because there’s two horns, and it’s kind of… I’ve ripped everything off Jim that I know.

*laughs

Rishin: I guess it fills it out more, musically. It makes it less of a duo improvisation and more of a piece of music.

Jim: I think it’s one of the great mysteries of life, like, you’re in a trio and one of you can’t make the gig and so you have to do duo and it’s completely different music. Or you’re in a quartet and you go to do a duo within that and you think ‘well we play all the time in this quartet, so we just take the same approach, just minus the other two’ and it’s never remotely like that, each group is it’s own group. And the durations and the pitch interest, all the elements are completely changed as soon as you remove somebody from it. Or add somebody to it. Like for four or five years I played with this guitarist Kim Myhr then we thought we add a percussionist to make it a trio. Stupidly, after all these years, I thought ‘oh yeah it’ll just be like Kim and me, and a percussionist.’ I should have known, you add someone else to the equation and everything changes. None of the relationships are the same. But strangely enough, you think a quartet would be more complex but in a duo our relationship is much more complex than in a quartet. Heaps more asked about what you should and shouldn’t do as a wind player.

Rishin: I guess because [in Embedded] we’ve got Sam occupying a really strong low point and Mon on a very strong high point. There’s the two horns in the middle. When we’re playing in a quartet you can kind of do your two verses and my two verses kind of thing. You knew you could come in and out in that larger space, but as a duo it’s different, in that those spaces can still exist, we can play them, but it won’t be the same.

Romy: Do you want to talk about improvisation? Laura, do you ever plan ahead with anything? Or is it very purely spontaneous?

Laura: It’s completely spontaneous in that I don’t prepare anything or think about what I’m going to do except duration possibly. Playing with Mon I have an idea of how we’re going to sound together because we’ve played together so often.

Monica: You know we’re not going to start playing beats.

*laughs

Laura: Yeah I guess with any sort of setting, if you know the other musicians you already have some idea of what the music is going to sound like, but not necessarily how it’s going to unfold. The composition sort of takes shape as you go. But yeah, maybe it’s different for other people.

Romy: Sam you said you usually plan out your solos?

Sam: Only the solo set, I approach the solo set very differently to collaboration. I have a prepared thing and I know it’s going to go for half an hour, I know a series of actions in a structure and so on. But it’s still very loose, it’s a loose structure. I change my mind, I change my mind, I might do something or I’ll do something else. It’s basically a bag of tricks that I may or may not use.

Jim: The vibrator in the cup, was that scripted?

Sam: No.

Jim: Because that seemed like a spontaneous action which really affected the whole half an hour pretty profoundly because suddenly there was this autonomous other action going on down here as well as your action. And that seemed like a massive compositional and conceptual event, that you’ve got a row of cups and one of them is moving and you’re moving in white down the back. So it sort of became this huge structure for me and yet I thought it was a spontaneous moment. So I think that’s kind of interesting. I mean, you could argue that Laura and Mon, the parameters of the music they’re going to make are well known and yet within the narrowness of those confines, those parameters, there’s infinite room for them to move. And they do. Which is why it’s kind of spontaneous. But if you were to focus back, you might go ‘oh it’s not really that spontaneous’ because they know exactly where they’re going to move around. So it’s questionable how spontaneous that is.

Laura: Yeah, I guess we also know, well I’ve heard how Monica reacts to things in the past, we’re familiar with each other’s decision-making.

Jim: But you could argue that Sam’s decision to put the vibrator in the cup had a bigger affect on his half an hour piece, when it was spontaneous decision, and had a structurally bigger affect than any little [makes high-pitched, breathy sounds] that you guys spontaneously injected into your performance.

Monica: What about you? Why don’t we start accusing you guys of…?

*laughs

Jim: It’s not a negative thing!

Monica: ‘You guys just play the same old shit over and over again.’

*laughs

Jim: Sure, I’m not saying it’s a negative thing, I’m not being negative. I’m just saying, it’s the whole question of improvisation and it just seems, I mean who cares? I don’t think it’s such a big issue. It’s such a difficult thing to define. It’s such a hard word to use. And I think there was two examples there of something that was said to be really scripted and yet was open to big influence of the spontaneous, and I’ll shut up.

Laura: Plus it comes down to your interpretation as well. I mean, you thought that that was a really spontaneous, structure-shaping moment but Sam might not even really be aware of it because he was focusing on other stuff as well.

Sam: Do you want me to tell you? I didn’t know it was moving around that much.

Laura: It was kind of dancing, it was cute.

Sam: I mean, when the thing falls off you know ‘ok that’s what I’ll do.’ I made that decision then to put the vibrator in the cup because the vibrator was next to the cup. And I was listening to it but I wasn’t watching it so the fact that it’s movement was the thing that was stupendously, amazingly structure-defining moment, that’s really interesting information.

Monica: It was interesting how you were talking about how you devised this plan as a way of enjoying yourself more when you’re doing a performance in a spontaneous or improvised music context. Then you do something and become occupied by the performance whilst everybody else is going ‘oh look at the little thing moving around, it’s amazing.’

*laughs

Sam: That’s what I like in music as well, whether it’s performative music or not, that you can focus on little things and they can have their own lives and the audience can actively decide what is interesting and what isn’t interesting and always will. And that’s why having lots of things happening at the same time, lots of decisions being made, is interesting because it lets the audience choose their own path through a performance. And everyone’s path is unique. And that, for me, is one of the important parts.

Laura: So all those people in Sweden who saw Jim’s concert probably really enjoyed it because they thought it was hilarious or something…

Jim: I don’t know if they enjoyed it. They just thought I was a nutcase.

*laughs

Monica: It would have been something new as opposed to ‘I’m going to see a Jim Denley concert tonight and I’m betting this, this and this will happen,’ in the same way that you were saying with me and Laura, you kind of hedge your bets as to what is probably going to happen. But in Geelong, Sweden you’ve got a scenario where not many people have seen balloon man Denley so it’s a whole gamut of fresh perspectives.

Sam: So then maybe the point of improvisation is in the exchange of the new to someone else. Like the improvisation happens with the audience member, rather than in the performance. It doesn’t matter if Jim and Rishin are doing the same shit they practiced yesterday because it’s the first time I’ve heard it and I’m as important in that relationship as they are. I’m devising my understanding of what they’re doing.

Monica: But then you’ve also got how it changes its delivery, depending on how many times it’s been done, so it’s not necessarily totally fascinating to Jim and Rishin because they might have done it before which is kind of getting into this nomenclature of what improvising is blah blah blah, which I think is just analogous to humans in general, you have these kind of habits or these patterns that you kind of eek out your distance but often tangents are created by something new coming along and going ‘holy shit look at me look and me’ and you’re like, ‘oh that thing.’ As opposed to, to make a really bleedingly obvious one, to playing the same chords over and over again like you might in a recital or a pop band.

Laura: I think it’s also, for example Rishin and Jim, whatever they felt in the moment of their performance it’s going to change potentially after they’ve talked about it with people or heard other people’s reactions to it. Like it someone said I don’t get it or I wasn’t really interested you might feel a bit negative about it. If someone said wow it really blew my mind I’ve never heard that sort of playing before… I don’t know. But someone else’s experience of your music can maybe shape how you remember it or how you approach it the next time.

Rishin: It’s the space as well. I played what I did in the beginning because when I sat there and played before I was like ‘oh wow that sounds really good, this room is resonant, I’m going to play long notes. Lots of long notes close together.’ But if it was in a really dead place then I wouldn’t have done that. Improvisation is not just what we do together, or with the audience but with the space in which it’s in as well. And also the sounds happening outside but that wasn’t such a big thing in my playing today I don’t think. And also there’s this political aspect of improvisation, the utopian thing where me and Jeremy [Tatar] could get up now and play a piece of music because we’re improvising but if we didn’t have improvisation then we couldn’t just start playing music together. We could ‘jam’ but that’s improvising as well. We could have never met and have no idea what we do but in that improvisation we can work it out.

Liam: On that note there’s also, as mentioned before, lots of conventions around how to improvise. Like what Jim was saying before, when you guys perform there is kind of an understood range that you will operate within and I guess on the political implications of that, I guess that would suggest one dominant cultural definition of improvisation and maybe that’s not the same thing we talk about when we talk about improvised music. If that makes sense?

Monica: Sort of, can you explain it again?

Liam: Ok so I think the idea was that improvisation is a kind of liberatory experience where people who don’t know the same music can get together and perform music and that’s a very free environment but the improvisation that we see called “improvised music” often needs that knowledge of what improvised music is, to my way of thinking.

Laura: Capital ‘i’ versus little ‘i.’

Audience: I think it’s very rare that two people who don’t play the same music get together and sound really good.

Rishin: But there’s good music and improvisation.

Audience: I think 90% of the world’s music is improvised. I think the definition of improvised is not reading it from a piece of paper which means a really large percentage of the worlds music is done like that. Even in a pop band the bass player might be improvising the lines. Just because it’s not free of pulse or harmony, things like that, that’s got nothing to do with whether it’s improvised or not. It’s a totally different topic.

Rishin: But that’s within specific styles and genres.

Audience: So you’re improvising just as much as you want to really, I think it’s a personal thing how much you want to improvise. How much you want to be spontaneous or how much you want to plan ahead what you’re doing.

Reuben Derrick: I think in this kind of situation it’s using improvisation as a philosophy rather than as a device or a tool as you might have in a jazz band or a pop band or a classical musician playing a cadenza where it’s more a tool that’s drawn upon. Whereas playing improvised music, that’s the whole point of it, to improvise. And any idiomatic things which occur they’re in fact being used as materials themselves so things are swapped around a bit.

Jim: I think spontaneous thought happens in lots of methodologies for making music. Apparently Stravinsky used to sit at the piano and go [makes piano sounds] and then write it down, because he didn’t plan anything, the music just came out of his head and he wrote it down as quickly as he could. And Schoneberg actually talks about writing a string quartet… it wasn’t going very well. He walked down to the shops and as soon as he bought the loaf of bread he heard the next few bars in his head. He raced home to quickly write it down so he didn’t forget it. So I mean, clearly, in making highly determined, composed music there is really spontaneous thoughts going on. To me the difference is that you decide to… have those spontaneous thoughts happen in real time, sharing the act with other people. And then Rishin’s political stuff comes in to play in a big way. But in that act of deciding that you’re going to be open to spontaneous thoughts of your own and with somebody else I think that’s going to make a massive difference even though Rishin and I might not have had a spontaneous thought during our whole duo. I don’t think improvised musically necessarily has to be full of spontaneity. And you could argue that Mon and Laura’s duo is pretty pre-determined as to which areas you’re going to deal with. And if you’re going to try and work very closely at composite sound together and you’re not going to do what Rishin talks about and work in parallel. They’re big compositional decisions that have already been decided before you turn up.

Monica: It’s this de-terming of everything because everything seems to be a misnomer of the last thing so it’s kind of easier to say improvised music even though it kind of wasn’t and at the end of the day we sort of aren’t but still have to call it something because otherwise you end up going on this 700km rant about what it isn’t and therefore all the things it could be, if it were to exist after said rant, may or may not be applied to… you know? And it’s like well fuck, I’ve got nowhere else to go. And I don’t think the terminology that’s it’s given in it’s current state is all that impressive actually.

Laura: But yeah, as you said, improvised music doesn’t have to be totally spontaneous. It’s just open to the possibilities of something happening that you’re not expecting to happen and finding ways to deal with that.

Audience: That can exist in any type of music, in all situations. I don’t think it’s exclusive to “improvised music.” I kind of feel like improvised music is a genre as much as it is a term to describe.

Monica: But you end up in a situation where you can’t call it anything. Like Reuben was saying, instead of it being a tool you sort of have to go at it as a philosophy because otherwise there’s just so many filaments that are going on. It’s more like this is the box of stuff that doesn’t belong anywhere else because there are no drawers small enough to put other things into as well, or something. Which is again the reason why I think it’s important that how you’ve [Romy, Liam] been programming, curating shows over the last – don’t even know how long now – that sort of, I hate this term, mash up that happens with the cultural styles. You know, you put on an evening and you’ll have Jim and you’ll have Kell from The Singing Skies playing and some pop ensemble and someone branching out from being a ceramicist. And it’ll all be on one evening and the audience is kind of obliged to sit through the whole thing and check out music that they’ve never checked out before. It’s brilliant. You end up with this new hybridizing of music and these new starting points. I mean, I personally am not influenced by staring blankly at a wall going ‘I really need to come up with a new good idea.’ It’s going to happen through all the other intersecting stimuli. So thanks for that.

More photos from psh.live November
PSH Gallery on Facebook
Anyplace Projects on Facebook

Lee, Vic and Tom (pictured above in their new room) run an artist management and touring outfit representing some of the most interesting and exciting new Sydney musicians. Their impressive roster includes Albatross, Bon Chat, Bon Rat, Collarbones, Dro Carey, Hensen, Hugo Frederick, Jonti, Mike Who?, Peon, Polographia, Preacha, Rainbow Chan, Thomas William, Wintercoats and 48/4.

We’re excited to have a new project working at Anyplace, and are looking forward to big things in 2012.

In October, psh.live saw three performances that engaged with the capabilities of the human voice, its relationship with technology, and how we comprehend the voice in and outside of language. The first act was a collaboration between Marcus Whale and Ivan Cheng, Whale & Cheng. Followed by Tony Osborne’s multi-microphone performance, and finally Gail Priest with singing, soft-synths and loops.
The discussion between artists and audience moved around topics of improvised performance, implications of equipment set-ups, criticisms of physical movement in sound based arts and much more. Regrettably, due to a technical glitch, the last quarter of the discussion was not recorded.

Gail Priest:
Psh.live Gail Priest by psh.live October

Tony Osborne:
Psh.live Tony Osborne by psh.live October

Whale & Cheng:
Psh.live Whale and Cheng by psh.live October

Liam: So today we had a loose theme of people working with vocals in one way or another and we saw three different takes on that general theme. I guess I’ll start at the beginning and ask something that was on my mind during Marcus and Ivan’s set. How do you see your work fitting into a not just purely musical but also a theatrical, dance kind of framework?

Ivan: I would say it’s to do with what we individually do, in terms of outside of this collaboration, which started on Friday.

*laughs

Ivan: In terms of the way that we approach performance, I guess the first few times that I was really gigging was part of a different outfit called Ronnu Panda last year and that was born out of wanting to do something nice for easter. Then I played with a few more people and talked about how they saw vocal experimentation, because I think that vocal experimentation is quite a funny thing to be doing. It’s a tricky, tenuous road to be walking, in terms of how earnest you are. In terms of ratifying that with what I wanted to be performing I decided that I did need to incorporate more of a physical approach rather than just a sound one. And that kind of seeps into everything I do. I would say with Marcus, correct me if I’m wrong, but Marcus’ entry into the industry has always been more through sound as a pure form rather than performance. Then gradually with some of his other projects it’s become more performative. I think he’s really found that he wants to engage with the audience. And I think we’re both interested in that, and we’re both interested in what each other do, even though what we do is quite different I would say.

Liam: There was quite a nice synergy of sound and performance or movement in your set. I was getting a feeling like there was almost a ventriloquy kind of thing going on where you (Marcus) were almost making the sounds that you (Ivan) might make if your fingers were contact mic’d, like if physical movement could be directly transferred into an aural type thing. I guess what I was wondering is it purely improvised or are the movements and the sound worked on, last Friday.

Marcus: I think we were going to be more premeditated but then we decided not to be. We had discussions. We jammed for literally a sum total of ten minutes.

Ivan: And we figured that it was just an endurance thing that kept our things really short and because we didn’t have technology to be doing looping and have that repetition. Repetition had to be formed by the live performer and that’s not always easy to sustain or it’s not interesting. I think in our second piece that we did today there was a lot more sustained ideas as opposed to the other two where we were pushing for quite in and out, fluxy, quite dynamic.

Marcus: Yeah and in terms of the movement and sound… it’s interesting though, sometimes you don’t want to be too… you want to be interactive with your other performer but you don’t want to just copy everything that they’re doing. There are a lot of different ideologies and approaches, sometimes you want to be strong and sometimes you want to follow a little bit. But when we’re both doing quite different things it’s kind of interesting to maybe apply some skeletal ideas across the board. Like if your mouth is super open (Ivan) then maybe my mouth over the microphone would also be super open, and that would have a completely different effect, but it would look similar and there would be a similar attitude, a residual similarity which is made different by us just being different.

Ivan: And I think maybe with the physical thing it’s another type of commitment. You shut of some senses and open other ones, more than if say I was sitting there and doing things with my mouth or with cavities and things like that. My awareness of Marcus becomes different and so I think it changes the whole beast entirely.

Marcus: Yeah, totally.

Tony: I think you struck a really good balance between working with and working against the sound. It was a really great interchange between those two principals and I appreciated the fact that you (Ivan) had this strong movement element, it actually engaged me with Marcus’ movement as well, you know, he wasn’t static. And I think sometimes there was a really great collaboration with the way you were moving. I think it works really well.

Gail: I’m just wondering what the thinking was behind deciding whether to go acoustic as opposed to mic’d in this instance, Ivan.

Ivan: It’s just really a big freedom thing. I am not good with technology and I have never really learnt to use programs, triggers, pedals and all of that. That’s not what I do I guess.

Marcus: I was thinking that because I’m coming from one source spatially and you’re coming from one source spatially… It would have been interesting if you’d used that spatialisation with the microphone with stereo speakers there and you performing here.

Ivan: I just don’t want something stuck to my face, it’s such a big limitation.

Marcus: Yeah it’s totally a limitation, and because I am working with amplification in some ways, if I put my entire thing in a different musical space or a different sound space it’s sort of easier to work off each other.

Ivan: I feel that if we’d both ended up doing something quite acoustic then the result wouldn’t have been quite as interesting. We would have been imitating each other a lot more, like trying to merge into sounds and come out of sounds. While that definitely has a place I don’t think it’s what we wanted to achieve.

Marcus: I don’t think I’m that comfortable with improvising with just my voice.

Tony: But using the practice amp, the level you’re at, I know it’s electronic but because you’re at a similar level your sound never dominates Ivan. It’s very well balanced.

Ivan: I think I can be quite loud if I want to.

Marcus: You can be, you can be, which I discovered. Which is really good because I was worried because we practiced in my lounge room which doesn’t really have much resonance – this room has got a bit – and I think in that room it was kind of difficult to tell but here it was kind of nice to be able to crank it a bit and still be at a similar level.

Ivan: What will we do when we start playing in bigger spaces, if we play in bigger spaces? The first time I ever worked with Marcus was two years ago, we were working on a Destiny’s Child cover album and Marcus was criticizing my microphone technique.

*laughs

Gail: Is that Destiny’s Child cover album ever going to come out?

Marcus: Oh, we did one track.

Ivan: We did kind of, one and half.

Marcus: Now we’re aspirationally working on a Beyonce cover album.

*laughs

Ivan: I sent Marcus a few files but he doesn’t know how to use dropbox.

*laughs

Romy: And Tony, you have a kind of movement background as well, and you were talking today about freedom when performing?

Tony: Yeah I was saying to Jenny. This set up I’m quite happy with, I don’t feel restricted by it. The first time I did it I stood up with the looper on the floor and used mics and I actually found it much more restrictive because to come back to generate sound I always had to come back to the microphone. That’s why I thought of this thing of having it around my neck. And then I did work once sitting down at a desk with the stuff and I found that really, really… that was restricting because I had no movement options. It just doesn’t feel right to bounce around in your chair. But I don’t move that much when I perform in this set up, I’m quite comfortable. I’ve been working on a smaller rig that I can have on my body with a radio mic system.

Marcus: Kind of like Lucas Abela.

Tony: Yeah, yeah. See I haven’t seen his early work, I just heard about that from Romy. But Sam Pettigrew has his workman’s belt that he puts things into, I think that might be the way to go. That’s a future plan, to be able to be completely mobile and still have a few electronic options on the body. I haven’t resolved the problems of phantom power or not phantom power and all that stuff yet.

Marcus: You do have a lot of gear though, with the looper and the mixers and the effects. Would you then have the looper on the floor maybe?

Tony: No I’ve got a little single battery, single tracker looper. So it would be mainly the single track looper and the Kaos pad and maybe an effects pedal to get a few other sounds out of it. Have to work all the practical stuff out. I’ve tried it out in the studio, looping, but I haven’t resolved this mic problem, as I was saying – holding a mic, forget it. It’s not what I want, but I need to have something here [near face]. Correct me if I’m wrong but the small face mics they need…

Gail: Well they’re radio transmitters so they go back to…

Tony: They communicate with a pack on the belt. I’ve got the guitar version but it’s getting a mic that will power the looper and everything, I’ve got to get that wiring sorted out soon.

Ivan: Can I ask, what – especially with the looping pedal – what made you decide to keep yourself stable and still with all the microphones? Was it a purely aesthetic choice? Why?

Tony: I had a music background before I had the movement background so it was just a desire to return to make music.

Romy: And now you’re hoping to kind of converge them into the one project?

Tony: Yeah there are all these things I do that I’m quite interested in mixing up. I mean I do to a certain extent, using spoken word and stuff, some of the theatrical things are there. But yeah I’d like to get to move more freely.

Ivan: I’ve seen videos of you on the Whip It channel doing more free improvisation movement type things and you still use spoken word, but the times that I’ve seen you “gig” it’s been in this set up, with the microphones and all that.

Tony: Yep, I did Whip It last night. I was an accompanist to the dancers, and it was bizarre and horrible.

Ivan: Really?

Tony: Yeah, I just felt like I was completely… they wanted very specific things and I’d been warned off noise, so I was trying to sing sweetly for them, might as well have left the gear at home.

Reuben: I think that’s interesting, what you’re saying about bringing in the idea of a workman’s belt. It seems kind of consistent with… I mean, regardless of the changes in technology there does seem to remain, coupled with the ongoing criticism of straight laptop performance, there’s this kind of idea of performance needing to be a wholistic experience. And with the advent a century ago of recording I think it kind of exaggerated that because we’re more sort of aware. I’m probably rabbiting on a bit here.

Tony: I’m interested to know what you mean by the word wholistic?

Reuben: Wholistic in the sense that it is a full physical engagement with the space and with the audience. And that seems to be an ongoing audience expectation regardless of the technological change. I find that interesting and I wondered what you think about that?

Tony: For me, if you’re watching a laptop-er, get over it, you’re watching a laptop-er. What’s wrong with that? I’ve heard those criticisms ‘oh you’re just sitting there, he could be checking his email for all we know,’ that kind of opinion or attitude towards laptop music. I think that’s just the mode of performance, they actually produce live electronic sounds, I think that’s fine. That’s why I say, this set up, I won’t stop doing what I did today. If I do the other thing where I’m more mobile, I think…

Reuben: I want to make clear that this isn’t my criticism but I find it interesting that this is an ongoing thing and it’s been quite a long time and still the arguments haven’t changed very much.

Gail: They’re the arguments that you start having when you first start seeing the work, you know what I mean? And then after you see the work for a while you stop thinking it and you stop having the arguments so of course the argument is going to be ongoing because new people find the laptop scene and they go ‘What is this? Why aren’t they doing anything?’ but if they actually begin to really appreciate the music very quickly they get over their expectation of performativity. And there’s the other aspect of that, if you are adding in an unessential level of performativity it’s actually horrible, and so it’s very fake. There’s something beautifully essential about going ‘I’m making these sounds and this is what it sounds like and I want you to listen to them,’ as opposed to being distracted by other things which aren’t essential to the making of this music.

Marcus: There’s certainly people though who felt the need to bring laptop performance into a different performative context.

Gail: And I think that’s fine, and it works when the gestures involved are essential to the making of the music, not just layers plastered on top.

Tony: I really want you to give an example. Can you do that without naming names?

Gail: Well I can because I already put it in an article. Mark Behrens performance at Liquid Architecture was a lot of non-essential movement involved with his making of the sound and it was very difficult to watch because it seemed very pretentious and it totally distracted you from the actual listening of the music.

Jenny: How can you say which was the performance? I mean, watching Ivan today, for me the body is the instrument for voice and dance and movement. And so, it’s a continuum…

Gail: Yes but with Mark Behrens, he had a laptop, he would press a button and then he’d form some kind of sculptural form or climb over the table. Also it totally had to do with tone and the way in which these actions are performed. It’s about what your performative presence is as well. If you actually don’t have a strong performative presence and you’re doing these actions then it’s going to read poorly. I would have much more enjoyed just hearing his sound.

Reuben: I think a good example of what you’re saying is a lot of times when people feel the need to add visuals but they won’t demonstrate any clear relevance to what the rest of the performance is. I think that connects to my point, if they’re going to work together then they’ve got to work together wholistically. One needs to illustrate the other in some way, otherwise it will seem contrived.

Gail: But the way Ivan moves, I see very clearly him generating the sound inside him in the way that he’s then about to move. It’s all totally connected in that way.

Ivan: But then you could argue that I could generate those sounds without moving quite so much. There is contrivance in the way that I do move.

Gail: There is, but you also have confidence in that contrivance.

Ivan: The thing about vocal performance is that it’s always going to be a direct form of communication and you have to choose to either listen or ignore that as opposed to instrumental stuff where it can just fit into the background. Vocal performance is really direct, it’s confrontational and so you just have to realize that people are going to believe what you say and you can’t half-arse it.

Gail: Exactly, it’s the half performance of things.

Reuben: But you (Ivan) kind of incorporate the dramatic as well as just being musical, it’s kind of theatrical, so one doesn’t really take away from the other.

Tony: It’s interesting yeah, I don’t think I mentioned this before but making sound came out of my dance practice. For years with improv performances I started making sound with movement but like you, which one comes first I don’t know.

Jenny: In most cultures except the Anglo culture there’s no separation of the vocal and the dance or the movement or whatever you want to call it. It’s all part of one.

Liam: Towards the beginning of your performance (Tony) I was noticing the sounds were obviously vocal but sort of from around the periphery of the vocal range I guess. Normally when we think of the voice in art we think of poetry or a singer or someone reading a script and it’s literal in a sense whereas the sounds we were hearing today were sort of splutters and stutters and clicks and ticks and things that accentuate otherwise text-based performance. Then later on we got to a point where there were words built upon loops and processed accents, things like that.

Tony: I blame the machine for making sense. Because Jim Denley, Amanda Stewart, Chris Mann, Rick Wu, those four people were probably the main influences on me and having the conceit to actually do this. They’ve given me permission. I’ve listened to them in different contexts for years and for me they are the innovators of using voice in completely different ways, different ways of thinking about melody and harmony. Especially Jim, you know, now I play in Splinter with Jim and it’s an enormous… it’s a revelation to play with some of those people. I’ve always been interested, but it’s quite thrilling to make those kind of pedestrian sounds and have electronics to transform them into some texture or even harmony. I just never get sick of generating those sounds and playing around with them. I remember when I did that for the first time and looped and multi-layered it, I was amazed at how musical it sounded. To have a bed of that sound going and sing something over the top of it is just really thrilling.

Romy: Yeah, it’s like the suggestion of something, but everyone is free to interpret it in different ways. One thing I was wondering, when I think of vocals I always associate it with more mainstream music, it always seems to incorporate vocals. I know that’s a really broad statement. But I was wondering if you guys have any influences that come from the more conventional styles of music… Marcus?

*laughs

Marcus: Well, I suppose it’s obvious. Or maybe it’s not obvious if you don’t know me. But I’m super into rnb.

Romy: Do you think that influenced your performance today?

Ivan: Yeah, I think we both have an aesthetic that comes from an idea of an amazing vocal performance. We didn’t grow up on a staple diet of say world music where we would listen to throat singing all the time. I guess yeah, the styles of vocal delivery, and I guess the modes that we dip into. Like I know that I go into a bit of an operatic type thing and there’s a jazzy type thing.

Marcus: Well it’s all very referential. And I definitely perform quite differently ever since doing more performing of pop music. Not that I did all that much feedback sort of stuff before, but it’s definitely totally informed by my experience singing pop music.

Ivan: And choral music.

Marcus: And choral music. I was a choir boy.

Romy: And Gail you use harmony, where does that come from?

Gail: When I started making laptop music I didn’t use voice at all for a long time,because I’d been a singer/songwriter and I wanted to make a big shift in how I thought about making this new kind of music. So yeah, I was using a lot more field recordings and detritus of digital stuff, but then I realized that the thing that I had that was most fluid, in terms of hearing a sound in my head and knowing how to make it, was actually using my voice. And so even before I started performing live a lot of the samples were vocal but they were very fucked up so you couldn’t even tell that they were vocal sounds. I realized that essentially the way I understood making music was vocally. I’ve never been able to kick a bit of a need for the prettiness of harmonies and melody in things. So I’m kind of interested in making aggressive pointy stuff that then lets you have this little moment where you get satisfaction and then it gets taken away from you, you’re kind of coming in and out of a comfort zone and a difficult zone, I suppose. And, having said I don’t mind watching people play laptops, I just personally got to a point where I went ‘I feel I need something that’s more live in what I do’ and started to work out how to bring vocals, which was kind of terrible a few times. And it’s a constantly evolving system as to how I’m tricking myself into doing vocals live.

Marcus: It’s quite a vulnerable situation to be in I think, going from being completely laptop to… I think playing an instrument with electronic music is much easier and not necessarily just practically but psychologically because making a sound with your voice – everything is quite controlled. From what I remember you (Gail) came into it with samples initially and then used live vocals.

Gail: Yeah I basically retro-engineered the things I had been doing to bring the voice into it live.

Audience member: What program were you using?

Gail: ‘Live.’

*laughs

Gail: When I started to really get a handle on being able to take in live feeds and things like that.

Marcus: And did you find that difficult?

Gail: You remember that horrible performance I did, yes! Yes I found it very difficult.

*laughs

Marcus: Is that why you didn’t immediately go to live microphone?

Gail: When I first started making laptop music ten years I just didn’t technically know how to do it and so it wasn’t ever an option really. But then as I started really getting into different ways of sampling live it became an option and I started to sing as a way of doing things. But also a huge part of it is that the voice is confronting and that’s why I push myself to make work that I previously wouldn’t have liked myself and constantly trying to work out for myself why I find the voice so confronting when it’s used inappropriately. And what it is that it reveals about us, you know. It’s worse than being naked I think, in terms of how it reveals you if you’re pushing your voice in a particular way that people find difficult. I found Ami Yoshida one of the most amazing performers to watch because she took a lot of the difficult gesture out of making extreme vocal sounds and so when you watch her play her face doesn’t really do anything or move. She kind of does everything by physically manipulating her vocal tract and there was something for me that really eased that tension of the brutality of extreme vocals, the way that she started doing it. And so that’s why I find it much easier to mediate using a microphone, if I’m going to do something extreme.

Ivan: Is it worth talking about text? Because that’s what’s really unique to the voice. So from what I could hear Gail you kind of shy away from using text?

Gail: I do now and that just came from having been a singer/songwriter and then getting older. Even though I do a lot of writing, I actually write for a living, when it comes to putting words in sound I find it too limiting. I want to, I really want to write songs but as soon as I do I just think that everything gets squashed down into this sense of figuration.

Reuben: So what do you write primarily?

Gail: I write about sound, a lot. So for me sound and words are very related. I think in words when I listen to sound.

PSH Gallery on Facebook
More Photos of psh.live October
Full psh.live archive

Serial Space & Anyplace Projects are offering 2 month residencies at our complex in Rozelle over the holiday period, beginning December 2nd, ending Jan 30th. If you’re going to be in Sydney over the summer and would like to maintain maximum levels of productivity – this could be for you!

We have five great studios to fill.

For more information click here.

**UPDATE**
This room has now been allocated to ASTRAL PEOPLE. Read more.

Anyplace Projects has one room available for a creative or artistic project looking for office space.

For $50 a week, you will receive a room on the first floor of our building located in Rozelle. The 12.5 square meter room has multiple power points and plenty of natural light, and access to our wireless internet.

Our building located at 118 Terry Street has parking and is located within walking distance of a post office, banks, shops and café’s. The successful applicant will be joining a number of other creative projects including publishers, screen printers and artists studios.

Applicants:

Anyplace is offering this room to support creative and artistic entrepreneurs in their professional development by providing access to affordable space. Prospective projects satisfying these criteria should send an application to anyplace@anyplaceprojects.com

Applications Due COB, 8th November 2011.

Include an outline of the project covering:
What it is you do. Examples of your work.
How long you’ve been operating.
Why you need working space, and how you intend to use the room.
As well as anything else you deem necessary.

For more information, or to ask any questions please contact anyplace@anyplaceprojects.com

Facebook Event
www.facebook.com/Anyplaceprojects
www.twitter.com/AnyplaceAri

Annandale local Jonathan Pappert – also known as Mannheim Rocket – Crafts classical bass music, sourcing sample material from Baroque through to the present day. His recent release ‘De Profundis’ on 3BS Records shows a brooding, dark side in dealing with Shostakovich’s brutal 14th Symphony.

The limited edition, hand screenprinted and felt lined packaging was produced in the Screen Printing Studio at Anyplace by Jonathan and resident screen printing aficionado Carizza Teague.

The entire release can be listened to online here, with the limited edition copies also available for purchase.

September’s psh.live featured Pimmon (Paul Gough), Oscillateur (Christian Moraga) and Jeremy Tatar. Using loops, delays and an array of hard and soft effect units, the three artists performed somewhere in the musical vicinity of drone and ambiance. As always, the performances were recorded and are available online.
Following the performance artists and audience discussed the usefulness of musical terms like ambience and experimental, how they as artists position themselves and their practices within contemporary music as well as the technical and conceptual aspects of their performances.

Jeremy Tatar:
Psh.live Jeremy Tatar by psh.live September

Oscillateur:
Psh.live Oscillateur by psh.live September

Pimmon:
Psh.live Pimmon by psh.live September

Romy Caen: So we had an atmospheric droney day today – I was wondering how you guys feels about the word “ambient”, and whether you’d apply it to your own practice?

Paul Gough: No, I wouldn’t. I feel the term ambient probably belongs to Brian Eno. It’s like a lot of musical terminology; it’s a vague attempt to attach a tag to give a point of reference. So I think ambient, seems to almost conjure up something gentle and lulling, and I guess there were aspects of all the performances today that incorporated that. But personally I wouldn’t call my music ambient, because I don’t think it really fits that bill because it’s got too many jarring images.

Romy: Are there any genres or labels that you do feel are appropriate?

Paul: I find it hard, even as a passionate collector of music I find it hard. I can only say well this reminds me of this, and I will refer to other artists, and inevitably end up using those boxlike categories and terms. Personally though, I find it very difficult, even if I meet people; generally someone else says “Paul makes music!” and I just cringe because they say “Oh! Whats it like?” and I have no idea!

[laughs]

It’s probably really determined by what they listen to themselves, if you know they have an ear that is willing to listen to unusual things, then perhaps you’re in a better space to explain what you do, but if your reference point is Elton john, then good luck.

Audience: What about experimental?

Paul: Yeah, well I find it… experimental what? It just doesn’t really conjure up – I guess it has become a term in itself now, you can kind of guess it will be something good or something strange, but I don’t know if it really markers what you’re going to expect. And I guess for me I like to have a fairly shape shifting approach to what I do, because the kind of music I love isn’t any of those genres we’ve just mentioned, it’s a really open palette, so I always bring into it elements of music I love. I was saying before – and I don’t want to be the only one talking, so someone else please jump in – for me when I listen to all these unusual little elements of sounds, I actually hear a song in my head, when it’s frustrating to me is when those elements that should fit like a jigsaw don’t. So sometimes it can sound like a horrid mess. But if I can get the balance right then I can hear this other song, I don’t know if other people can hear that, they might just hear a horrid mess all the time. So for me I’m pursuing my own vision of some kind of unknown uncategorised expression, and if it works it works, but today; it didn’t really work.

Reuben Holt: When you said you don’t associate with the term ambient because you said it’s too jarring –

Paul: I said my stuff is too jarring…

Reuben Holt: Yes. Does that assume ambient music can’t be jarring though? Because they often describe, post-humously, Erik Satie’s work as ambient, while quite a lot of that is very discordant and jarring and quite varied. I always think about how Brian Eno defines ambient music as mood music, I don’t know what your take is on that.

Paul: I guess Eno also talks about allowing music just to happen in the background and to be just there and hovering. Satie’s work; I don’t know if they would affix ambient to all of his compositions. But once again, these terms are hard, it’s a bit like the term post-rock, I mean what the hell does that really mean? People now know that post-rock is going to be an instrumental rock band that is going to be very quiet, then very loud and have song titles that are twenty words long.

[laughs]

Christian Moraga: And a glockenspiel might appear.

Paul: So I guess in my own mind, “ambient” seems to conjure up things that are more in the realms of a gentle experience, and there are elements of that in my music but I don’t just have that as my core. So I find all these terminologies are going to mean different things to different people.

Reuben: Groups like Coil who are described as ambient are definitely not gentle in anyway.

Paul: I guess I wouldn’t call Coil ambient. They might have songs that are ambient, or elements. But I guess we’d have to come to an agreement about what ambient means.

Romy: And do you feel similar Jeremy?

Jeremy Tatar: I don’t really mind what people call my music, because I don’t really know what I would call it. I haven’t been doing it long enough to decide. If it’s ambient, then I guess it’s ambient, and I don’t really mind, because genre names, I don’t think they really mean anything. Language can’t really describe sounds that well, for instance a sound that is warm; Warmth – you can’t really apply that to sound. So if it’s ambient, then so be it.

Christian: I guess I am the same as Jeremy; I haven’t been doing my music for that long either. So I can understand if someone describes one part of it as ambient, or not. But at the same time I think that once someone affixes those kinds of terms it pushes you towards gigging with those kind of bands or writing in a particular way, I think sometimes those labels can be detrimental. I wouldn’t want to be put in with “post rock” bands because I play guitar and so on. So if people want to call it that it’s fine…

Romy: But it’s a bit restrictive…

Christian: I’d just rather not worry about labels and leave that to other people.

Romy: I thought the term might be mildly offensive.

[laughs]

Romy: Does anyone else have any questions or comments?

Reuben: Only just, you said you don’t really mind how other people describe your work. I suppose I would wonder how you feel about how the types of gigs you end up getting, and where you end up playing will definitely be affected by the kind of niche people will find to put you in regardless of how you see yourself. So I suppose I’m wondering, do you see some kind of advantage in, even if its completely artificial, some sort of artistic self control over how your work gets shown.

Christian: I think since I’ve started writing things, one thing I’ve really tried to do is make what I want to make, and if I get asked to do a particular show I will do it. For instance I did a noise gig a few months ago at Dirty Shirlows and I didn’t really fit in there, it was noise, it was Fucking Noise! I was definitely on the mild side of the spectrum, but I got to see other bands and see what they’re using. Today I got to see Jeremy and Paul, and I get more out of that than being forced in one way. It was really important for me at that noise gig to not just do fifteen minutes of turn the amp up as loud as I could, I wanted to do what I do and make that fit in.

Romy: I think one of the similarities between the three sets was that you all seemed to have a plan, but one that incorporated a lot of improvisation. What might have been the ratio for you?

Christian: Well, I don’t have any songs.

[laughs]

Christian: On my soundcloud, it’s just loops I’ve done, sort of a safe place to come back to later. But I just sort of had a beginning and an end, and made it up as I went. I like that. Other times I’ve tried to really plan it, I’ve got to bring this loop in there, or go from this loop to another loop, or from C to F#. I much prefer to just have a start and an end and find my way in-between.

Jeremy: I feel the same. I thought over the last couple of days about what I would play. I thought I’d work in this key and use a vocal sample. But apart from that I guess I just played. I thought about what I was going to do, but it’s more like landmarks along a path, where the path is improvised.

Paul: I’ve sort of changed a lot in how I do things. I always just play continuously, today I did five pieces that slowly morph between. That consisted of about 60 to 70 loops that I had. Each of those I know as a track, so I think it’s very song based, almost pop based. I have I guess a skeletal structure, if I wanted to do those pieces again I know where the loops are and what makes up that song in my head. And I can play along with it and put other shapes in. I guess for me it’s a little like workshopping to come up with a solution, and that’s how the performance comes about.

Romy: You were talking earlier today about interacting with your laptop.

Paul: Well only because after 10 years I was sick of people still talking about laptops, whether they’re boring or not boring, quite frankly I go to something and I go to listen, I don’t care if people are dancing on the ceiling or if they’re miming. I couldn’t care less. For me it’s about what I listen to. So it gets a little tiring. I’ve seen people try to sex up the laptop to some extend, and I’m not sure if it ever does anything but looks good.
I found I always sang along with these songs in my head, but never actually used vocals. So in the last few years I’ve started using more vocals – as another texture, not necessarily meant to dominate the song. So I started using the inbuilt mic in the laptop and processing, and the first time I did it someone thought I was licking it or pashing it off or something. And I thought, that is one way of making it [the laptop] an extension of what I was doing rather than something I’m coldly staring at, looking bored.

Christian: I liked that. I think it was the first time I saw that, someone using an inbuilt mic.

Paul: Well it’s a work in progress, because in the middle, my problem was, I used this – I always do this at the last minute decide “I think I might just try this!” – And it’s this cracked version of a thing called Spectral Delay, it runs loops or samples and when that isn’t occurring it takes the input of your mic and processes that live, but for some reason when I turned it on it started absolutely feeding back and I have no control over that, even with the volume right down it just kept going, the only way to stop it was to physically turn it off. And that took the whole guts out of one piece I was doing, and then I tried to, on the fly, do some other stuff but it just kept shutting down, so yeah – that was great!

[laughs]

Liam O’Donoghue: So in terms of software, and trying to understand what’s happening on your screen, I can see the colours changing while you’re opening up different windows. Predominantly were you using a processing window or do you use a bunch of different programs?

Paul: I run in multiples. So today if I hadn’t done that… Over the last few years I’ve built up a backup system, and that is I run things in multiples. So I run multiple programs so if one thing drops off, the whole performance doesn’t disappear off the face of the earth. I’ve been in that situation where that has happened. So instead of running my loops in the same application, I run an application per loop. So at any given time I could have 10 apps going.

Christian: How does that work with syncing?

Paul: It doesn’t. I think of sounds in orbit. It’s a bit like when you stand at the traffic lights and you hear them going around, slowly coming around to sync…

Christian: I try to do that with some of my loops, where I do one loop in 3/4 one in 4/4 and one in 5/4 so eventually they do meet up…

Paul: Yeah I really like that aspect of sound. I’ve never used midi, I’ve never tried to. I’ve got one bit of software that is a sequencing program, so of course in that situation it does (sync). I’ll even take loops of sound and deliberately chop them really badly, that can make some interesting things.

Liam: And so from software to hardware, Christian, you make a lot of your own hardware. How does that figure into your practice?

Christian: It’s sporadic. It’s been a challenge, because I want to make everything myself, but sometimes those pieces don’t fit. I make pedals, modify and make custom pedals and small synthesisers for people, and so I try to make my own things and implement them, so when I hear something I can think “I can make that”. Sometimes it’s successful and sometimes it’s not. It’s hard trying not to force it in to what you’re trying to do creatively, so I find there is a line where I might have something that sounds great but doesn’t work with everything else I have. In saying that, most of the stuff I’ve tinkered with or hacked up has been to get it to sound like a keyboard or to make it a little dirtier, custom boxes and stuff.

Jeremy: How many pedals did you have today?

Christian: Ah, shit… I think I had about ten, my girlfriend gives me shit about it. But I actually have another board that I didn’t bring today, I thought it was too much.

Liam: And Jeremy, were you using two of the same pedal? What is that pedal? I’m not familiar with it.

Jeremy: It’s a BOSS DD-20, it’s a delay pedal, one is mine and one is a friends. I don’t own very much gear. That is the main thing I use for making music. I am a flute player, that’s what I do, and what I really liked about delay pedals is that you can sustain the sound, because when you’re playing flute you have to breath and then there is silence, and you have to breathe. But with the delay pedal you don’t have to, so the idea of being able to have a continuous sound is really fascinating to me. And I thought well, I know how to use this one pedal, and I know that a friend has the same so I thought I’d try to use two. I think it worked out Okay.

Christian: Did you use the first one as sound on sound and then the other one as delays, or both delays?

Jeremy: Well one was I guess the core loop, and then I was using the delay effects on the other to go into that. That way I can have four loops going instead of two. It’s not quite 12, or what Paul has got, but yeah, I can’t really multitask like that.

Liam: So your experiments with bass have been mostly with this project? Or is it something you’ve always done, because you haven’t been doing this project for too long right?

Jeremy: Well I played bass a lot in high school, I played a lot of jazz. But about two years ago I started getting into this type of music – whatever it’s called. And so a lot of my bass playing has developed from playing this type of music.

Liam: Well thanks everyone for playing, I really enjoyed today.

Romy: Thanks.

PSH Gallery on Facebook
More Photos of psh.live
psh.live Archive.