meagre resource productions
A rampaging, radiophonic phantasmagoria of nefarious four-colour fear.
Originating as a live performance at the Poetry Club in Glasgow this studio version was broadcast as part of the ‘Vernon & Burns Hour’ on Resonance FM in 2016. Subsequently it has been aired on Wave Farm, Radio Revolten and Radiophrenia.
Vernon & Burns, thinking aloud, offer a quiet meditation on noise. Extracts from interviews with noise pollution officers from Dundee City Council’s Environmental Health Department are combined with found sounds, songs, field recordings and other voices to create this experimental live radio piece. Part audio collage, part documentary this is an unorthodox investigation into attitudes towards extraneous noise and noise pollution.
Commissioned by Extrapool (NL) in 2005 for ‘Audiotoop’ – an evening of live, performed radio plays and Hörspiel. The full programme was aired on Resonance FM in June 2008. A condensed version appears on ‘Play’, a CD and publication produced by Extrapool, 2006:
http://www.kormplastics.nl/Audiotoop.html
“When the devil pulls the strings, all the world must dance…”
Constructing an episodic narrative from silent movie intertitles, Vernon and Burns translate grand melodramatic gestures and deadpan pratfall pantomime into the audio realm. Hand-tinted frames of sound, under-cranked audio slapstick and sepia-soaked expressionism for the ear are projected onto the cinema screen of the mind’s eye.
This programme was commissioned by WORM and was produced during a residency at WORM studios, Rotterdam. It was performed live as part of ‘Popular Noise for the Masses’ at WORM, March 2010. The narrator was Giles Bailey.
First aired on Cafe Sonore, VPRO Radio 6, June 12th 2010. Subsequent broadcasts on Resonance 104.4 FM, 2011.
A studio version of a live radiophonic work produced by Vernon & Burns, commissioned by Tramway, Glasgow in 2012. The piece explores the internal space of the subconscious and the logic of dreams. Part documentary, part experimental radio play, it features readings from Barry Burns’ dream diary intermingled with interviews about people’s dreams and sleeping habits set to an accompaniment of sound effects and music.
“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams… Man… is above all the plaything of his memory.”
André Breton
The piece was originally performed on two consecutive nights in October 2012 as part of a triple bill of performances with Lisbeth Gruwez / Voetvolk and Zoe Irvine & Pippa Murphy. The radio version has been aired on Resonance 104.4FM, Basic FM and Soundart Radio.