Russell Davies

bionic listening

One of the things you discover when you first get your hands on musical equipment is how great echo sounds. You slather on bags of the stuff and listen to the repeats and building and feedback doing extraordinary things to the source sound. Then, normally, you go one of two ways, you either learn restraint and subtlety and dial it all back or you don't and become a sound artist. But, it's still true, there's something really primal about the sounds of echo and related phenomenon. Something that really gets you.

Which might be why RJDJ works so well. It's a programme for the iPhone that takes in the sounds that surround you and plays them back to you; treated and altered in all sorts of ways. Including bags of echo. I took RJDJ for a couple of trips the other day and really enjoyed the effects of it.

This first one is a tube trip from Great Portland Street to Southwark, about 7pm on a Thursday evening. MP3 here. Some of it is just your average environmental sounds, tweaked a bit, nice, but unremarkable in any sound installation. But there are regular moments of some loveliness; like the melodic stuff that emerges about 5 minutes and 10 seconds in.

Or, this is a walk from the SouthBank to Carburton Street later on that same night. (MP3) There seem to be less of the environmental sounds in this - the music seems to be derived from the rhythm and bulk of what I was walking through. So there are intense bits that represent walking down Oxford Circus and quiet rhythmic bits towards the end as I got away from the crowds and traffic. And there's a slightly startling moment at 20:48 where a bloke who wasn't looking where we going steps into me and lets out a yell.

I think they're pretty listenable as ambient soundscapes, alright for working to, but where RJDJ really impresses is as a noticing tool. The way it plays your environment back at you, altered and treated, really makes you aware of the soundscapes you're walking through. You listen harder, notice more. It's the same effect as looking through a lens or a distorting mirror. And, as with a camera, if you're recording it, you look/hear harder.

It's well worth a try, I've only tried two scenes so far and I really liked them. It's good. (PS if the sounds quality isn't great it's because I had to record it via the headphone jack on my phone and Audio Hijack on m'computer.)

electroplankton jam

On Friday, at Playful, the Electroplankton Quartet is playing its second, historic gig. We're providing the music over lunch, rather like a Palm Court Orchestra.

We've thought long and hard about our performative strategy for this occasion and, inspired by musical heroes The Bays, have decided not to bother with any practising.

Instead, we thought we'd morph into the Electroplankton Orchestra and invite Playful attendees to come and jam with us. (Think Mahavishnu Orchestra - minus the musicianship and the hair. And the instruments.) We'll provide a bed of ambient noodling over which you can come and take a solo. With your own, slightly different, ambient noodling.

To join in you need a handheld gaming device with some sort of music application (that includes iPods / iPhones and Tenori-On, if you've got one). And we're hoping to snag Roo and his axe too.

If you fancy it please email us and let us know via electroplankton@russelldavies.com. So we can make sure we've got enough leads.

And please note; you can't get in for free by saying "I'm with the band", to join in you need a handheld gaming device AND a ticket to the thing. Which looks like it's going to be great.

(picture courtesy of Steve)

shepard, deep, brown

I think, after all these years, I've finally had a good idea for a blog. A purpose for which a blog would be perfectly suited; some sort of Analogy Library. I'm always coming across things which would be the perfect other half for an analogy; something that you're certain would come in handy as a metaphor for something but you're not sure what yet.

For instance, Ben told me at the weekend of something called the Shepard Tone. It's a combination of tones that sounds like it's continually descending without ever getting lower. The ear can't decide which tone is the fundamental and so occasionally slips to another one, thereby keeping the descent going. You can listen to an example here.

Doesn't that just strike you as something you could use metaphorically sometime? It's got to be a good analogy for something, just not sure what.

Incidentally, the Shepard Tone is not to be confused with The Deep Note, or The Brown Note. Both of which also offer metaphoric possibilities.

north american speechifier?

Speechification seems to be going well. People like it. We're getting more and more listeners (resulting in slightly larger S3 bills for us every month) and Roo is steadily adding new, technically cleverer things. It's also clear that the BBC are hard on our heels, implementing things that will make some of what we do redundant, not right now, but eventually.

So it seems like we should work harder at our larger mission - curating English language speech radio from around the world - and doing that means we've got some big gaps to fill, the biggest being North America. We all follow shows like This American Life and Radio Lab via podcast but we can't keep linking to them all the time; we need someone to do the hard slog of listening to radio all day, ferreting out the obscurer wonders of NPR and CBC. Anyone fancy doing it? It's not very onerous, a post a week would probably do. And with a lot of NPR you don't even have to grab the audio, they archive such a lot online. Drop us an email (blog@speechfication.com) if you're interested and we'll get you set up.

calling all workers

I've had to work this afternoon so I've made myself an energetic muxtape to keep me going. Lots of telly sports themes and marches. Have a listen.

swell maps

I dug this lovely old thing out when I was making this muxtape. But I'd forgotten how much I loved this cover. I bought it before I'd ever been to New York (or London much) but both were evoked so completely by the maps on the cover, and the contrasts between them - the New York grid and the London mess.

The design is credited to Red Ranch, who also did the Street Sounds Electro stuff, apparently, but I can't find much else out about them. There's probably a whole thing to be done about record covers featuring maps, but the only other one I can think of is the inner sleeve of Tormato by Yes.

get ready and roll the cassette

I made a muxtape for a warm evening. Just in case we have another one. It's got all the cliches, nothing clever. But, well, you know. Roll the cassette.

nibbles

Finally made me a muxtape. !2 songs, all less than a minute long. Whole thing less than 8 minutes. What could possibly go wrong? (Warning: Contains some rude words)

the performance is the product

I've just watched the film of The Bays improvisatory set with The Heritage Orchestra. Really wish I'd gone now. I love the way they're pushing the idea of spectacle forward, creating a feeling that you had to be there, continually raising the improvising bar. It reminded me of Bobbie's wise words here and here. It's not a solution for everyone, but by doggedly pursuing their notion that 'the performance is the product' The Bays manage to dodge both the old boss and the new boss. Their music is neither grist to the old record company mill nor content2.0 to be monetised2.0. It's music. I like that.

shlomo's hands

I've just got back from seeing Shlomo and DJ Yoda at the QEH. Very, very good. But what completely fascinated me was Shlomo's hands. Or hand really, because he's normally got a mic in the other. To start with you think he's just air scratching, miming the DJ sounds he's making. And he is doing some of that. And occasionally doing a bass guitar mime or trumpet or little fader tweak or something. But then you realise he's also dance/miming something for sounds which make sense visually, but don't correspond to any real or virtual instrument. We can understand why the action fits the sound but there's no underlying idea of an actual real world instrument. It's like he's tapped into how instruments should intuitively work, if you didn't have to worry about acoustics or physics. It'd be fantastic to try and build the instrument his hands imply.