Category: News

 
Magneto Mori: Vienna is a fragmented sound portrait of the city constructed from found sounds, buried tapes and field recordings. In this de-composition sounds from Vienna’s past and present are conjoined in a stew of semi-degraded audiotape. Using a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder sounds from around the city were recorded direct to tape over a two-day period. This tape was then cut into fragments and buried in a hole in the ground with a number of souvenir fridge magnets that erased the portions of the tape that they came into contact with. After several days steeped in the muddy earth of a Viennese garden the remaining audio fragments were exhumed, washed, dried and spliced back together in random order. The deliberate distressing and erosion of these present-day recordings results in artificially degraded sounds that fast-forward the effects of time, disrupting the perceived chronology of this audio matter.

During the tapes’ interment, old cassette, Dictaphone and reel-to-reel tapes were gathered from local flea markets and additional field recordings were made around the city. The addition of these found sounds stretches the timescale from just the short period spent making location recordings to perhaps as far back as fifty years ago. All of these elements provided the raw materials for a radiophonic composition that represents a portrait of Vienna in both place and time; an archaeological excavation of found sounds, lost fragments, buried memories and magnetic traces. Presented here are the sounds that endured…

Copies of the CD are available directly from me (just drop me an email), through my Bandcamp page or if you’re in mainland Europe shipping may be cheaper directly from the label.

https://markvernon.bandcamp.com/album/magneto-mori-vienna

https://cantimagnetici.bandcamp.com/album/magneto-mori-vienna

Various – Transmigration (LFI019)

The Immortals become mortal and dance with death. Sound as liminal agent, summons a weightless existence where the disembodied revel with transfigured spectral gestures momentarily relieved from earth bound duties.

What is the significance of similarities and coincidences? Are they rebuses of memory, delusions of the self and the senses, or schemes and symptoms of an order underlying the chaos of human relationships that applies equally to living and dead?

Available to buy from Lullabies for Insomniacs here.

 
At Trouble Tracer® we know one thing: quality is in the details. And what is true for technological developments is true for adequately identifying issues and matching them with the appropriate solution.

At Trouble Tracer® we also believe that accuracy is best attained by working together. That’s why we openly share solutions and lay out in a to-the-point and concise manner a reliable way to diagnose contamination, wear, damage and other potential issues, and how to best return to the ideal standards of performance and efficiency we work with dedication to maintain. The Trouble Tracer® guide doesn’t always give you enough information for you to know exactly what’s wrong, but it does mean that you can eliminate everything from the input to the point where the signal changes. It’s important to understand that when fault finding, any anomalous voltage is a symptom of the fault, and is not the fault itself.

With its unique patented technology, Trouble Tracer® produces audio and visual signals that technicians easily catch when they tap the target. But nevertheless, it does not require bending, cutting, freezing or any other actions that can damage cables.

Autofahrt is ideal for individuals that have difficulty in differentiating between static and leak noise on an electronic listening stick!

“…there are other noises that can spell trouble, are just irritating, or that can be expensive. How can we tell the difference? It’s certainly not easy. It obviously helps if you can identify the sound and where it’s coming from.”
Sarah H. Sanders

“All of these noises you heard were recorded in the Meagre Resource Workshop and have since been cured. Regular listeners will find out how all these jobs and repairs can be tackled in a way that’s easily understood. Everybody should know these sounds.”
Big Jack Hay

Thanks for listening! And remember: Cause – Remedy – Solution!

 

The resulting work should have been presented as part of Counterflows 2020 but unfortunately that was not to be. They are now working together on a longer term project for Counterflows 2021 but in the meantime Vernon & Burns in collaboration with Vowinckel have created an unorthodox sideways radiophonic portrait of the artist and her practice. The eccentric approach in the resultant audio collage is not intended as an accurate portrait of Vowinckel, more as an impressionistic overview with interventions and twists on the conventional form; thoughts and meditations on the act of purposeful listening and sound creation.

You can hear the piece and read more about the process on the Counterflows website here. It will also be broadcast on Radiophrenia at 10am on Friday, 20th November.

 

An audio time-travelogue. A found sound road trip. A vicarious vacation.

The basis of this piece is a found reel-to-reel tape labeled ‘Voyage Grèce en 1972’ bought from a flea market in Brussels 15 years ago. As might be expected it is a document of a Belgian family camping holiday to Greece. One side of the tape is an audio diary of sorts documenting the trip moment by moment, much of the time recorded in the car in between destinations it seems. This side runs to an epic 3 hours on long play. The other side is a recorded slide show commentary over a backdrop of traditional Greek music at a more modest 2 hours. Although it becomes apparent that there is a wife (referred to only as ‘bobonne’) and child in tow we only ever hear the voice of the father. They don’t even appear in the background. Maybe they were mic shy or maybe they were just never given a look-in. Either way their absence on the tape is perplexing.

I had been invited to Brussels this summer to make a new radio piece for Radio Picnic’s ‘Musica per la radio’ series. I was also supposed to be going on a family holiday to Greece but because of obvious circumstances neither trip has happened. Out of necessity the production of this radiophonic excursion has been my way of taking a holiday without travelling anywhere – a sonic souvenir from a vicarious vacation.

In the composition of the piece excerpts from the tape have been combined with my own field recordings from holidays in Greece decades later in 2005 and 2015. Holiday memories of Greece from different times have been transposed on top of one another, intermingle and become confused. In addition, improvisations with a collection of objects selected for their sound making properties that were bought from the flea market at the same time as the tape have also been incorporated.

Special thanks to everyone who helped me with translations: Elina Bry, Selene Mauvis, Jonathan Frigeri, DinahBird, Anne-Louise Kieran, Sonia Dermience, Inès Guffroy and Meryll Hardt.

Extra thanks to Elina Bry for additional Athens field recordings.

A project by Radio Picnic with the kind support of the Swiss Foundation for Radio and Culture and Pro Helvetia.

 

ETCS Guest Mix – Mark Vernon

01) Klaysstarr – reek (More No Place / ucorridor Recs)
02) Apostille – It’s Not Right (Alert / Alter)
03) Rob Churm & Joe Howe – The Great God Pan (unreleased)
04) Comfort – Better Need Assumptions (Not Passing)
05) Kübler Ross – Go On Your Way (Kübler Ross / Akashic)
06) Soft Tissue – Gesine 2 (Soft Tissue / Penultimate Press)
07) Hanna Tuulikki – Spinning-in-Stereo (Spinning-in-Stereo)
08) Luke Fowler & Richard McMaster – Twilight of the Rock Gods (excerpt / unreleased)
09) Klaysstarr – music (More No Place / ucorridor Recs)
10) Trouble Tracer – Clean Flow Morrow (unreleased)
11) Toi-So – Baby (unreleased)
12) Bell Lungs – Phosphodenderophobia (Phosphodenderophobia / Bandcamp)
13) The Modern Institute – Arabic Eight (The Modern Institute / Night School)
14) Sarah Kenchington & Daniel Padden – Tapered Things (The Bellow Switch / Shadazz)
15) Nichola Scrutton – Lateral (Bandcamp)
16) Cucina Povera – ZOOM0015 (Zoom / Night School)
17) Ellen Huynh & Mark Vernon – Stirring into the Awakening (unreleased)
18) Mark Vernon – Ill Fitting Rooms (unreleased)
19) Lucy Duncombe with Kenneth Wilson – And If I Was A Word… (excerpt / unreleased)
20) Sue Zuki – Every Conversation (We Are All Very Anxious / Domestic Exile)
21) Klaysstarr – ubiety (More No Place / ucorridor Recs)
22) Total Leatherette – Metro Boomer (For the Climax of the Night / MILK Records)
23) Vernon & Burns – The State Dismantling Corps (From the Cable to the Grave / Akashic)
24) Ela Orleans – Homily (Low Sun / High Moon / Setola Di Maiale)
25) Soft Tissue – Feedback (Soft Tissue / Penultimate Press)
26) Cyril Lamar – Kata (unreleased)
27) Streets of Glasgow – field recording

 

 

The piece includes now familiar soundmarks such as the daily delivery of beer barrels to the local pub, the shattering of glass bottles as they are emptied into recycle bins at night and the weekly maintenance of neighbours gardens that always seems to require extensive use of a leaf blower no matter what the season. More irregular sources of nuisance noise appear in the form of workmen erecting scaffolding, magpies nesting on the side of the house, drunken outdoor singalongs, overflowing guttering and a faulty burglar alarm that didn’t stop for three days solid over one memorably torturous bank holiday weekend. The irony is that on the only occasion that these sounds have ceased for any length of time I’ve spent several weeks doing nothing but listen to them over and over again.

The pub has made use of this time to create a beer garden at the back of our flat now so at least I have fresh impingements on my peace to look forward to as things begin to return to normal.

Source sounds recorded in Glasgow between 2002 and 2020.

Composed between May 20^th and June 20th, 2020.