Cramps, Elvis, Nugent
Cabin Feverish (extract)
2 x Elvis (Aiwa & Pioneer)
1 x Cramps (Dansette)
1 x Ted Nugent (Sony)
1 x Bruce Baxter Orchestra (Aiwa)
The list of vinyl taken from my database searches for – fever, sick, virus, emergency (no results for pandemic, epidemic, illness)
Remembering Llanina
Local musicians and local recordings combine with localised vinyl to explore Llanina on a sonic meander through place, memories and music, personal and collective combine to drift on the soundwaves of Cardigan Bay.
Beginning with field recordings of the river Llethi flowing through Llanina woods, combining with the gentle playing of Ceri’s harp and Elsa’s ethereal, fragile vocal layer, we moved slowly into the churchyard, through the gate delayed by the sound of crickets, the sea washing the sound of children on the beach towards us. The crows repeat, we move downstream towards the sea.
A voice from the waters, from 1988, familiar and reassuring suggests we are on the right path. Moving through time and to the sea, another voice, another tide, sings to us from the past, a lullaby of memory drifting from somewhere near, holding something precious.
Ar lan y mor we hear the waves continue as the past becomes present and the present becomes everything. The variations are pebbles on the shore, beautiful and perfect they emerge and disappear until ar for dymestl appears as a beacon in the waves.
Barrel organs from the seaside and safety signals, combine with layers of magical harp and voices of the imagined and the real, the past and the present. A submerged bell rises from the waters, clychau Llanina emerges with fiddle and harp, tides subside we hear birdsong too before the waves return to take the bells once more.
Industrial, kinetic we move along the coast framing pictures on a tide of memory, finding pearls in the noise of shellfish, the clatter of boats leading us out into Cardigan Bay, where Wales and whales become one ar hyd y nos.
Anfon Nico, a duet, refuses to play. This is the end.
The video above is the audio recording of the live performance in Llanina Church, the video is made from photos of the performance and other clips shown there.
Audio contributions from – Ailsa Mair Hughes; Lou Laurens; Elsa Davies; Ceri Owen Jones; Jacob Whittaker; Deri Morgan; Bill Hamblett; Liz Whittaker; Winston Evans.
Vinyl includes -Adar Tydfor; Picture Frame Seduction; BBC Wildlife of Wales; Vernon a Gwynfor; Eleanor Dwyryd; Doreen Lewis; Aled Lloyd Davies; Gwynne James
There’s another post about this performance here
Reflections on the river
FLOW – A morning stream of sonic interactions, river songs and vinyl.
Collective connective musical memories emerge from an assemblage of old record players, vinyl records, local recordings and sound pictures.
FLOW seeks to connect people and places through a process of listening, participation and response.
I wanted to create a work that followed the river Teifi’s journey, taking a sonic walk along the river through field recordings made between my home town of Aberteifi and the festival, while drawing on local recordings of mine from previous projects based on the river (Deuair & Peter Stevenson – The Talking Tree), vinyl records referring to the river and other places on it’s route (Vernon a Gwynfor – Taith Teifi), and recordings of my late friend Lou who loved the river and was inspired to write a number of songs relating to it. I walked along the river Teifi, reflecting on its journey and mine, both geographically and temporally. Recording along the way, gathering a variety of sounds – the water, the trees, the wildlife and myself in the landscape.
I used to walk the footpath along the river with Lou talking and listening and I remembered a song she wrote called ‘Bright Rivers’ and thought perhaps to use that in some way. While looking for that I found a song simply titled ‘The River’ in an archived folder labelled 11 early tracks. It was from Lou’s first ever demo recording session, recorded at Fflach studios, Cardigan in around 1992. Simple, a bit rough, and unique those recordings are the only ones with Lou playing her own guitar accompaniment. It has an energy that reflects her youthfulness and her passion for singing and writing songs. There was also a version of ‘Moon River’ with Katherine Crowe, recorded in Cardigan with Jon Turner at Backbedroom studios in around 1998, it’s particularly poignant as both Jon and Kathryn have also died in the last 10 years.
Through this the work took on a theme of loss, of constant change, movement and personal reflection. Forming as the body of source material grew, a sequence of sounds started to suggest itself. Starting with local recordings and those personal memories and sounds, the idea was that it would becoming more national and collective before reaching out toward international and universal.
Starting the work with a precomposed track made from field recordings and my local recordings, for about 10 minutes it played through the local area towards a collection of records. The records were selected using my database, searching for words connected to rivers – river, stream, brook, afon, creek, nant etc. and names of rivers – Thames, Tyne, Avon, Teifi, Usk, Severn, Mississippi, Colorado, Niagara, Nile, Danube etc. Others were selected because they had rivers on the cover (see below and previous posts).
From this eclectic collection of vinyl I selected and mixed a few choice bits before allowing the work to become less structured and deliberate, embracing random loops from the collection. At about 20 minutes I opened up the mix to the audience and invited them to come and join in the selection and playing of the records for the remaining period.
All the while the room was lit in one corner by projected video of water reflections and ripples of streams, a series of 3 screens with headphones played video of previous works made on the Teifi, Wye and Severn. One included new videos made for the festival, 3 vinyl records playing videos, 2 filmed playing in the locations pictured on their sleeves (Cwm Allt Cafan & Cenarth) and one the Vernon a Gwynfor song ‘Taith Teifi’ playing in the studio. Another screen showed ‘Sometimes I live by a lake’, a slideshow of photographs taken during my years living in Llechryd, mostly looking out towards the river and Abercych. Adjacent to the installation of turntables and screens was a stream of vinyl records pooling then winding across the floor, inviting careful steps to explore its journey through the space.
Vinyl stream – Photo by Andrew Filmer
The process and legacy of the work has, for me, created a keen sense of connection to the river and the surrounding area, a feeling of being part of the artistic continuum existing in the teifi valley. A community and practice connecting us all both locally and to the wider cultural landscape.
The following were either shown in the space during the installation or were used in the composition.
Thinking on rivers as a theme I also remembered one of the last poems written by my Mum during her last year, a difficult but rich time of reflection filled with creativity and kindness. https://lizwhittaker.wordpress.com/more/the-dancer-on-the-river-of-light/
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Khalil Gibran
The Christmas Variations @ Bara Menyn
A collection of vinyl first shown in Oriel Blodau Bach earlier this year.
Born near Llandysul at Christmas in 1766, Christmas Evans grew up in Bwlchog, in the parish of Llanfihangel-ar-Arth and went on to become one of the most well known and influential preachers in Wales.
“Christmas Evans (1766-1838) was described by D. M. Lloyd-Jones as ‘the greatest preacher that the Baptists have ever had in Great Britain’. This remarkable one-eyed Welshman came from humble beginnings to exercise powerful preaching ministries throughout Wales..”(1)
The collection of sleeves with their different designs attest to his status and continued popularity as a preacher, receiving several re-issues on the Qualiton label. The sermon itself was first delivered on July 1st 1835 in Bangor and the recording is of Rev. Jubilee Young some 118 years after Christmas Evans’ death.
As well as the covers on display there are a number of audio/video works using the records
(1) ‘Christmas Evans – No Ordinary Preacher’
https://www.dayone.co.uk/products/christmas-evans-no-ordinary-preacher
Cân Elenydd
SHIFT, Basement Capitol Centre,
Queen St, Cardiff, CF10 2HQ
Opening
18.00 – 22.00 Wed 20th November 2019
Gallery opens from
12:00 – 18:00 Thursday 21st November
12:00 – 18:00 Friday 22nd November
19:00 – 21:00 Friday 22nd November Artists in conversation with SHIFT 12:00 – 18:00 Saturday 23rd November
Audio-visual work by a number of South and West Wales based artists exploring recently discovered personal family histories connected with voice/song. The artists’ have all (re)connected with a family member, living, dead, met and not met through an inquiry that started from a stumbled upon object, family heirloom or conversation. With this work the artists both archive and bring to the present the details of significant family events, routine activities and synchronicities across the generations, deepening personal connections and family relationships and drawing attention to their own sense of mortality and identity.
Cân Elenydd Video / Sonic Installation. A collaboration between composer Sianed Jones, her mother, visual artist Mary Lloyd Jones, video artist Jacob Whittaker visual artist Maria Hayes with additional direction from Louise Wells.
It all started with a discovery of a handbag containing pencil written letters from Sianed’s great aunt Dilys writing to her brothers in the trenches of WW1; a correspondence with a mystery Mr J.R.Owen from Machynlleth; a gift of a Swyn; a charm of protection; a story of Sianed’s grandfather and great Uncle as young lads, walking from village to village around Devils Bridge carrying a harp on their backs; a series of live video/sonic/visual improvisations rooted in the healing powers of a circle. Cân Elenydd weaves all these stories and improvisations together. http://www.sianed.co.uk http://www.jacobwhittaker.co.uk http://www.mariahayes.info http://www.marylloydjones.co.uk
17m:19s:00f by Jon Rattigan a video piece I made during a period of research on the duration, beginnings, ends and mid points of events.
The film’s split-screen form depicts the duration of my late father’s life, with each frame of video, projected at 25fps, representing a single day of his 72 years; on one side, aided by 2 time-codes, we see life progressing and on the other, we see it running out.
The seemingly abstract colour cycle on screen is actually made of extreme close-ups of his handed-down photographic darkroom equipment and on the sound track we hear his home-made photo-processing timing tape, as well as a little singing. The objects are arranged according to the way in which the Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro used colour to represent different periods of a life- birth, education, maturity etc., in the film The Last Emperor. www.jonratigan.com
‘In His Heels’ by Johanna Hartwig
After my Grandmother died we found some old 78 records in her house, including a recording by my Great Grandfather, a Cantor (singer/leader in religious song and prayer) from Czechoslovakia. One song stood out. Google translated the song title from Hebrew as ‘In His Heels. After squashing this big voice into a digital file, it felt as though it should be let out, expanded again into a physical space and shared. That same year I found out I had a cousin, Sion, living only a couple of miles away. Sion agreed to respond to the recording using our voices and acoustic instruments that we could both play to some degree or other. The people who contributed to this track – Leon, Si, Adam, Thomas are part of the story too, a continuation. In the making of it there were found sticks in place of misplaced brushes, shared parallel histories and a friend that turned up at the right time to help make this. www.johanahartwig.co.uk
Postcard Records & Rivers
Couple of postcard flexidisc records with a bit of river theme. They might be used in a mix for the Afon festival http://www.may-nard.org/afon
Top centre image is the Guildhall from Lendal Bridge, crossing the river Ouse. It is mentioned in the recording…
Aberglasyn Pass N. Wales. The bridge over the river Glaslyn has a nice story connected to the Devil, as do various other bridges..
