Hugh Davies: Sounds Heard: A Potpourri of Environmental Projects and Documentation, Projects with Children, Simple Musical Instruments, Sound Installations, Verbal Scores, and Historical Perspectives (2002)

8 April 2021, dusan

Sounds Heard is not only a collection of writings intended for people who are interested or involved in contemporary music, especially those performers – including children – who lack a formal musical training. It also charts a wide cross-section of the activities of an intriguing musical personality. At different times in Hugh Davies’ nearly 40 year career he has been variously described as “the world’s leading electromusicologist”, “the most informed person around on the general subject of new instruments”, “unique English composer”, “one of the most interesting instrument inventors of recent decades”, “the remarkable live-electronics ‘freak”‘, an “electronic wizard”, “a humanist” and “I have never seen any music teacher who is as fond of children as he is”. Do these really refer to only one person? Who is the real Hugh Davies? Why has his modesty prevented him from being better known?

This book focuses on many of Davies’ insights about working as an artist, a musician, a composer, a performer, an instrument inventor, an educator and a researcher. He takes nothing for granted, and there are always wider implications than his own immediate involvement. Even his more avantgarde scenarios are tempered with his “very British sense of humour”. Many of the different areas of experimental music since the 1960s are touched on, including electronic music, live electronics, invented instruments, sound sculpture, sound installations and free improvisation, in all of which he was one of the British pioneers.

The CD illustrates a cross-section of the themes covered in the book. As with most of Hugh Davies’ solo performances and recordings, no conventional instruments were used on the entire album, with the exception of one short piece in which existing music has been manipulated with tape techniques.” (from back cover)

Publisher Soundworld Publishers, Chelmsford, 2002
ISBN 1902440056, 9781902440057
124 pages

Publisher (archived)
WorldCat

PDF (29 MB)
Selections from accompanying CD

Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner (eds.): Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (2004/2017)

4 February 2021, dusan

Audio Culture maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, the book traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture.

Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, ambient music, hip hop, and techno. Instead of focusing on the putative “crossover” between “high art” and “popular culture,” Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another.

Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction.”

Publisher Continuum, September 2004
Second, revised edition, Bloomsbury, 2017
ISBN 9781501318351, 1501318357
xviii+646 pages

Reviews: Ian Whalley (Computer Music Journal, 2005), Christopher DeLaurenti (eContact!, 2006), Dene Grigar (Leonardo, 2005), Clemens Gresser (Tempo, 2005), Gregory Taylor (Cycling74, 2018).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (updated on 2021-2-6)
EPUB, EPUB (updated on 2021-2-6)

Plague Time Television, 5 eps. (2020)

17 December 2020, dusan

“An online public service television styled project temporarily set up by Brighton, UK based sound and visual artists Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance, as a way of replacing their annual Colour Out Of Space festival during the current pandemic.”

Interview with creators: Edwin Pouncey (The Wire, 2020).

Creators

Episode One
Neil Campbell & Sticker Foster & Richard Youngs + DDAA + Rick Potts + Moniek Darge + Charlie Drahiem + Natalia Beylis + Teignmouth Electron + Usurper + Sophie Cooper & Jake Blanchard + Glands of External Secretion + Ian Murphy + Plastic Hooligans + Lief Elggren + Fritz Welch + Tom & Milly Roberts + More.
Video (123 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Two
Bruce Russell, Ludo Mich, Kuupuu, BBBlood, Renato Grieco, Floris van Hoof, The Dan, Rakel & Klara Fröberg Experience, Jonnie Prey, Hannah Ellul, Luke Poot, Jérôme Noetinger & Liz Racz, Wol, Core of the Coalman/Kneeling Coats, DJ Foreign Extra featuring Adam Bohman, All Ords, Dylan Nyoukis, Food People & Adam Butcher, Fielding Hope & Silja Strøm, Manny Pads, Chie Mukai, {AN} EeL, Ash Reid, Nicolas Nicholas Langley, Lucian Tielens, Blue Spectrum, Marja-leena Sillanpää and Maths Balance Volumes.
Video (147 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Three
Forrest Friends, Ezio Piermattei & Chiara Fiori, Embla Quickbeam, Liz Albee, The Piss Superstition, Yoni SIlver, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, Dog Lady, Shane Mcdonell, I’D M Theftable, Bob Desaulniers, The Nevari Butchers, Sami Pekkola, Posset, F.Ampism, Bren’t Lewiis ensemble, Anla Courtis, The Bohman Brothers, Andie Brown, Slohhh Listener, Roy Claire Potter & Kieron Piercy, Reijo Pami and Porest.
Video (155 min, May 2020, YouTube)

Episode Four
Amon Dude, Evil Moisture, Doreen Kutzke, Cloth, Aqua Dentata, Chick White, Lala Lu & Skull Mask, Witcyst, Ute Wassermann, Steve Beresford & Blanca Regina. Peter Fengler, Gussett Giblett, Feghoots, Alex Drool. Stewart Greenwood, This is Yvonne Lovejoy, Gen Ken Montgomery, Muyasser Kurdi, Mitchell Brown, Papal Bull, Sharkiface, Licker, Michael Zuclicki. Alice Kemp, Brandstifter, Herb Diamante.
Video (138 min, June 2020, YouTube)

Episode Five
Beyt Al Tapes, Hearty White, LDSN, Elaine Mitchener, Mutant Beatnicks, Blood Stereo, Ecka Mordecai, Dora Doll, Iain Paxon & Ida, Grohs, Sippy Cup, Willie Stewart, Vlubä, The Bim Prongs, Plastic Containers of Nothing, Olivia Furey, Barry Esson, Odie Ji Ghast, Ed Shipsey, Modern Medicine, Khnaisser/Khnaisser/Robertson/Robertson/Sturm, Loner Club, Christian Butler-Zanetti, Michael Kemp, Sandy Milroy, Scott-Buccleuch/Sigmarsson/Sharpley, Chlorine, Dave Miko, Bleep Shapes, The Teleporters, Allanah Stewart, Zven Baslev, Cody Brant & Frances Young.
Video (190 min, July 2020, YouTube)