Absolutely ecstatic to learn that I’ve been offered the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) scholarship.
I’ll be researching for a PhD at the University of Leeds with Dr Ewan Stefani & Dr Mic Spencer at Leeds.
According to my research proposal, I’ll be working on -
“Systems, space & sound art: new sonic environments in interactive formalised systems.”
- although I’ll be damned if I remember what that means…
a brief COMA ARCHITECTS update:
The pre-orders have now shipped. Sorry about delays. LOOKS PRETTY THOUGH, RIGHT?
We’re posting out to distro tomorrow morning so buy now to avoid dissappointment and getting inevitably railed by Discogs in a month…
James sound checking at last night’s show in Bradford. We had a blast, great sets by Gaz Brown and Bridget Hayden. The film we accompanied by Eoin Shea looked beautiful!
As part of the With Zerø project I mentioned a while back, I’ve made the move to building a modular synthesiser – in part a longer plan to learn more about ‘traditional’ electronic music synthesis, and also for some cool tech geeking. Only two Eurorack modules for the time being (fuck, they’re expensive?!): a Doepfer A-143-4 quadVCLFO, and a FoH Plague Bearer filter/drive/bat-shit-noise module. Really enjoying the squelchy sounds you can coax out of this simple setup!
Doepfer a-143-4 & FoH Plague Bearer by With Zero
Will put a few more short ideas up soon, currently working on a first release under the With Zero name. Should be fun! In the meantime, remember that you can download the first of the Sleep drones for free:
Sleep #1 by With Zero
Tomorrow night (Thursday 19th April), I’ll be performing a (sort of) live soundtrack to a film by Eoin Shea as part of a ‘Sound and Image’ night, hosted at the University of Bradford. The film is Eoin’s re-treatment of Tarkovsky’s beautiful STALKER. What’s more, I’ll be performing with James @Huity Lavender and Gareth S. Brown. Oh. And BRIDGET HAYDEN (of VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA fame).
Just a quick non-Ithaca heads up.
My little micro-label, Coma Architects, has just put a new release up for preorder:
For Machines is the anonymous project of a friend. Its loud, uncomfortable, and harsh in places. For fans of Niblock, Striborg, SOMA, and Ambarchi.
It’s a limited run (50) of C90 cassettes with a beautiful accompanying essay on technology and decay, screen-printed to black A3 by good friend @slittslitt.
You can pre-order it now (£8) from the For Machines bandcamp. Hoping to get it all ready to post out sometime next week.
Been ticking the idea over of a new solo-project for a while now. Ithaca is something of an unwieldly beast when it comes to live performance, so I’ve been throwing around this idea of stripping things right down… only to re-build them much, much more complicated.
So the premise is this: electronics done very live. No safety nets. Taking ideas from free-improv, live-coding, and hardware-hacking.
Here’s a short recording from the first rehearsal earlier today. Live-coding in SuperCollider3; and live-splicing of loops on the Akai reel-to-reel:
Rehearsal #1 (.mp3 | 11.5 MB @ 320kbps)
[Admission: this is only a short edit, so the SynthDefs & Patterns were already defined in SC3, and the loop had been cut]
The idea for doing this live would be to start blank: empty tape & empty code.
Today I remembered I have a blog. So, some news:
Coma Architects
‘Grow Flowers’ COMA-04 is now sold out. Thanks to everyone who bought it, had a lot of fun putting that one together so it’s really nice to know its now out in the wild.
There are still a couple of copies of ‘Quiet, Please’ kicking about the lab, but if you don’t have a copy yet don’t jump to order just yet because…
COMA-05 is on the way!more news once the artwork is together, but for now settle safe in the knowledge that it’s a soundscape I’m particularly proud of, and I’ve once again collaborated with the amazing Sam Little on design and print duties. Needless to say this will be something special!
I was ill; played in London
Had the honour of playing the Hibernate x Home Normal Christmas village bonanza thing back in December. I was sick as a dog but eminent philosopher and sometimes housemate, James Lavender pulled me through and we had a LOT of fun playing to a room full of hip southerners (including *some* females, which for a drone festival is a bit disorientating). Big thanks to those who endured us while they waited for Machinefabriek to play.
Props to Gianmarco Del Re for filming everyone and doing unnerving close ups on James and I:
Ithaca Trio from Gianmarco Del Re on Vimeo.
Live at the Dalston Vic – excerpt – 18 December 2011 -presented by Home Normal / Hibernate
Doing some new things:
Not really at the stage where it’s worth talking about any of them yet, but keep yer lids peeled here and on the Coma Architects site for more news soon. Some new projects, collaborations, projects, etc.
Also, if you’re Leeds based I keep getting roped into playing Jazz records at Nation of Shopkeepers on Cookridge street on a Sunday. It’s a great atmosphere, I essentially just drink and play records until I start playing afro-beat and fall over. If you’re in town come join!
presenting COMA-04:
GROW FLOWERS
a 3″ CDr by Ithaca Trio
GROW FLOWERS is a two-track EP, recorded live on November 29th, 2011. Featuring soundscape recordings; Derek Bailey inspired guitars; frequency-domain processing; AM Radio; and microtonal sine-waves.
Strictly limited to an edition of 45 (one per customer), each copy comes in a handmade yellow card fold. The blood-flowers artwork is wax-dripped and drawn by hand, ensuring each EP is unique and personal.
Tracklisting
1. Flowers (08:03)
2. Grow (11:37)
PRICES & PRE-ORDERS
£4.50 [UK +£1; EU +£1.50; WRLD +£2]
COMA-04 is available to pre-order now from the shop or by emailing me (ollie[dot]thurley[at]gmail[dot]com), with copies shipping out early next week (I’m in Amsterdam until 12/12/11). For those coming to the Hibernate/Home Normal show in Dalston (18/12/11), save yourself on postage – I will hold back some copies for the show so you can buy them there.
If you would like a download link, send me a message after you order and I’ll send one your way.
I will be performing its first London show as part of the Hibernate/Home Normal Christmas extravaganza at the Dalston Vic on December 18th. Tickets available here.
Very often, I forget I have this site. I do something which I should really post about, but I don’t and then nobody knows about it, then I forget about it.
Last week was Jumbo Records‘ 40th birthday. Jumbo are without a doubt the greatest records store I’ve ever set foot in, so I felt privileged to get asked to help them celebrate. Props to Adam & Matt!
To mark the occasion, Coma Architects made a soundscape recording of the shop on it’s 39th year, 364th day… pressed it to CDr, recruited the amazing designer Sam Little (aka Slitt) to screen print us a bunch of ‘worn record stacks’ covers, and delivered them to the shop on the big day. Really proud of the art/prints on this one. Sam’s done an amazing job of wearing everything to look like gnarled minimalist records. The paint-flecks on everything are some real legit DIY shit!
There’s 10 copies left, they’re £4 (+ whatever P&P is). If you’d like one, drop us a line. First come, first served.
Got the initial marks from my masters back yesterday, absolutely blown away. Passed with distinction, so needless to say – I’m currently being a gloating bastard.
Well, the creative pact kind of dropped off didn’t it? Turns out working minimum wage jobs for marathon length shifts kinda saps the creativity out of you… who knew. Still stamina building, I’m going to get back on the coding this week – currently battling for efficient ways of controlling multiple Servo motors via serial communication between Arduino & Processing. #DelimitingFail
Got a few more Ithaca releases lined up on Coma Architects over the next few months with more art by Slitt. Also hoping to get a release out by a good friend of mine that’s gonna blow socks off.
Also got some Ithaca plans for Tokyo Droning & Hibernate records at some point. And a gig before 2012…
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