Sheet Erosion

Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France.

The piece is comprised of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations.

In the composition family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.

Field recordings used in the piece include: Le Téléphérique de Brest (cable cars), hotel lifts, wind whistling between railings on the Pont de Recouvrance, wind whistling through gaps in doors, traffic, ventilation units, fans, light bulbs, alarms, automatic toilets, soap dispensers and hand driers.

The piece was originally commissioned as a radio work for Kunstradio and was first aired on Ö1, Austria on Sunday 29th August, 23:00 – 0:00 (CET). An album version has since been released as a CD on the Sonoris label.

Sheet Erosion

Audio Archaeology Series Vol​.​3: Brest
Sonoris / SNS-25 CD (2023)

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. It was originally commissioned as a radio work for Kunstradio, Austria in 2022.

The piece is comprised of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations.

In the composition family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.

Released by Sonoris, France as a CD in a limited edition of 300 copies with 4-panel full colour digipak featuring artwork by Mark Vernon. Available to purchase direct from Sonoris or Cortical Art.

Live at Full of Noises

From 7pm on the 25th November I will be playing a special quadraphonic live set at the newly refurbished FON headquarters at Piel View House, in Barrow Park, Barrow-in-Furness.

Tickets available here.

– and the following day I’ll be running a free workshop ‘Memories are Made of Hiss’ looking at tape as a form of memory storage, playing with field recordings, tape splicing, degrading recordings with magnets, tape loops and other methods of fast forwarding the effects of time.

Piel View house from 11am – 5pm, Sunday 26th November. Sign up here.

Sheet Erosion CD – out now

I’m excited to share the news of my latest album release on the excellent Sonoris label based in France. The CD is available to purchase direct from the label here – or from Cortical Art here.

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. It was originally commissioned as a radio work for Kunstradio, Austria in 2022.

The piece is comprised of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel’s tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these lo-fi recordings of radio and TV shows. Captured with a mic in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, ambiguous activities can be heard in the background; babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping and muffled conversations.

In the composition family histories and musical tastes are transposed over a more contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts time as well as sounds. Speeds change. Chronologies become confused. Different instances in time are blended and fused. What seeps through these chronological crevices are events and incidents unmoored from linear time taking place in a chimerical non-space.

Live at The Old Hairdressers

I will be performing a new set as part an excellent triple bill at the Old Hairdressers in Glasgow this Saturday evening. Also playing will be Yorkshire based composer and sound artist Kirk Barely and improvising cellist and sound artist Semay Wu. For this one I will be delving deep into my found tape archives of karaoke and home singalongs.

The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow.
8pm, Saturday, 18th November.

Tickets £10 – available from here.

Golden Cassette – out now

 
“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.” Jimmy Carter, président des États-Unis, 1977.

Released by French label, TRUC, ‘The Golden Cassette’ is a compilation album in a limited boxset including a golden tape with printed liner notes and illustrated map.

It is based upon the idea of revisioning or remixing the Golden Voyager record sent out into space as a greeting message from planet earth to extraterrestrial life forms.

The album features work by: Mark Vernon, Jay Mitta, Felix Kubin, Prins Zonder Carnaval, Insólito UniVerso, Boubacar Cissokho, Alastair Galbraith, Los Siquicos Litoraleños, Charbel Haber, Tarawangsawelas, Shuta Hasunuma, Cara Stacey, Li Daiguo, Pierre Bastien, Chyskyyrai, Tim Hodgkinson & Ken Hyder and JTM.

Available to purchase here.

Mal de Débarquement – Cassette & download out now

I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new collaborative album with Paris based DJ, sound artist and producer, Elen Huynh.

‘Mal de Débarquement’ features 10 tracks created for a collaborative broadcast made in 2020 on LYL Radio for the show Choses Contraires. With the intention of creating a form of a radio essay, the pieces were constructed from raw recordings, pre-composed elements, patterns, sung, spoken, whispered and hidden voices.

Available as a tape or download. The cassette is a limited edition of 100 copies with Riso printed inlay card by anais____98 featuring artwork by Bloeme van Bon.

You can order a copy of the tape or the download here.

Tomorrow Is a Big Distance

I have the honour of being the opening track on a new compilation album by Kyiv, Ukraine based Sentimental Productions. The album also features noise and experimental music luminaries Lasse Marhaug, Norbert Moslang, Joachim Nordwall, alter of flies, Howard Stelzer, Francisco Meirino, Modelbau and Edward Sol.

‘Tomorrow Is a Big Distance’ is available as a CD or as a download here.

Sloppily Depicting – The Waverley, Edinburgh

Short notice, but tonight I will be performing in Edinburgh on the same bill as Alexandra Spence and MP Hopkins under their Banana duo guise.

The Waverley, Edinburgh from 7.30pm. More details here.

SONICALLY DEPICTING (temporarily renamed SLOPPILY DEPICTING) and TFEH co-present an evening when it’s finally safe to leave your home after the last dregs of The Festival trickle away down the drain…

With BANANA (Alexandra Spence & MP Hopkins), Mark Vernon, Marlo de Lara and Off Brand Asthmatic.

Magneto Mori: Brussels

·

Magneto Mori: Brussels is a process-based sound work that investigates the collective memory of Brussels residents, intertwining them with the environmental sounds of the city to weave new and unexpected narratives. It is an exploration of tape recording as a form of memory storage – and the deliberate distressing, eroding and deterioration of present day sounds to disrupt their chronology; historicising the present and fast-forwarding the effects of time. Contrasting and combining these sounds with higher fidelity recordings draws attention to the different substrata of time that are an intrinsic (though largely unacknowledged) part of any non-realtime sound production.

The intention here was to create a ‘memory tape’ that acts as an audio portrait of the city and its inhabitants. This involved asking people to recall their earliest or most vivid memories and recording them direct to open reel tape. On the other side of the tape everyday sounds of the city were captured.

Through a series of processes that mirror the complexity and frailty of human memory this ‘memory tape’ was then fragmented, muddled, corroded, partially erased with magnets, buried in the ground for 10 days and finally excavated and reconstituted. During this process sounds and memories are literally erased and the remains are spliced back together in a random sequence. The end result is a cut-up collage of fragmented voices and distorted field recordings. In some instances I chose to ‘re-construct’ parts of the missing memories using copies made of the original recordings.

In counterpoint, a semi-autobiographical text by Elodie A. Roy reflecting on her parents memories of Brussels is interspersed throughout the piece appearing as a series of answerphone messages.

Produced during a one-month residency at Q-O2, Brussels in August, 2022.

Commissioned by Kunstradio for Ö1 ORF, Austria. First broadcast at 22.05 CET, 21st May, 2023.

Narration written, performed and recorded by Elodie A. Roy.

All other recordings by Mark Vernon.

Composed by Mark Vernon.

Featuring the voices of Henry Andersen, Diana Duta, Julia Eckhardt, Nika Breithaupt, Stuart McGregor, Amber Meulenijzer, Pauline Mikó, Caroline Profanter and Mark Vernon.

Thank you to the participants, everyone at Q-O2, Elisabeth Zimmerman, Elodie A. Roy, Barry Burns and Manja Ristić.

Top