I am delighted to have been invited by Dominique Balaÿ to curate a programme for broadcast on WebSYNradio from 16th – 30th June 2016. Alongside a selection of my own works are compositions by Alistair MacDonald, Bethan Parkes, Luca Nasciuti and Mark Vernon – big thanks to them for contributing.
Read more and listen at synradio.fr.
Sonnets was a series of live, interactive, largely improvised sound poems, and was created for a Radiophrenia live-to-air commission in 2015. The work drew on the root meanings of the title word – from ‘son’ (song) and ‘sonus’ (sound) – rather than the traditional poetic form. I used minimal processing, and focused instead on weaving together a palette of breathy sounds, phonemic fragments and vocal gestures into a series of self-contained but interlinked sound worlds, sometimes with field recordings, to invoke or reference a fictional place or state.
(Please note the sound clips are currently off-air)
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 has been selected for Framework Radio’s seasonal CD release (winter 2014) to be issued on 21st December 2014 (the solstice!). Meanwhile it is available for listening through Framework and on various other broadcasts. The CD was first aired on Resonance fm on Sunday 7th Dec 2014. More info, with an option to purchase through donation, at Framework Radio. Here’s the track listing and details Issue #7. Well worth a listen – it’s a lovely thing…Many thanks to Patrick Tubin McGinley
Lateral has been selected for here. now. where? – a project in which a collection of soundscapes from different ‘sensibilities, languages and formats’ will be diffused inside local taxis through the sound and radio art platform Saout Radio. The project is curated by Younes Baba-Ali and Anna Raimondo and seeks to explore a notion of ‘delocalisation in the present moment through the experience of listening in the urban space’.
Lateral has been selected for the first Framework radio show of 2014. which will have a series of broadcasts during the week 12th – 18th Jan 2014 starting with Resonance fm on Sunday 12th. Broadcast details are here.
Collaboration with Sarah Tripp on 24 Stops radio artwork
“The work is a sequence of hourly chimes, one for each hour of the day. The chimes combine percussion and spoken word to reflect the character of a given hour and mark the passing of the day.
‘24 Stops’ was written and performed by Sarah Tripp
Composed for radio by Nichola Scrutton.
Percussion was performed by Nichola Scrutton, Fritz Welch and Mark Vernon and recorded by Iain Donnelly.‘24 Stops’ was developed on the inaugural Radio Writing residency at Camden Arts Centre with the support of University College London Hospital Arts.”
24 Stops was written and performed by Sarah Tripp and composed for radio by Nichola Scrutton. Photos © Sarah Tripp
24 Stops was later broadcast on Radiophrenia every hour on the hour for 24 hours in 2016.
Post Industrial Broadcast #1 (9’39) portrays a fictional place or state in a process of transformation. The piece draws from a range of source materials including hydrophone and contact microphone recordings, a radio, the human voice, two-way radios, and an oil radiator and synthesized sounds. Compositionally, the piece unfolds in a wave-like structure. Subtle sounds of water emerge and recede giving a sense of constant flow, while sheets of sound – long, loosely articulated sound gestures – are agitated and interrupted by unpredictable micro-collisions and interference. A sense of forbidding is subtly teased apart by hints of human presence and moments of iridescence.
Post-Industrial Broadcast #1 was awarded the 2013 IAWM Pauline Oliveros Prize for electroacoustic media, US.
2018
Re-release of Framework Seasonal Issue #7 on Bandcamp
2016
Undae! Electroacoustic Music I + II, Thrmnphone netlabel (Spain)
Curated show Glasgow Soundscapes: WebSynRadio (France)
2015
KcEMA Modern Soundscapes concert (Missouri, US)
‘The Stranger’, AKSC, World Radio Day (Macedonia)
2014
Framework Seasonal Issue #7 CD – featured artist (Estonia)
MUSlab (Mexico)
Undae Radio no.64, Radio Circulo (Spain)
‘The Stranger that is next to me’, Errant Bodies (Berlin)
2013
‘Nuit blanche’, Festival Futura (France)
‘Interzone’, The Whisky Bond (Glasgow)
A 30 min programme of my works has been selected for broadcast at the RadiaLx 2012 Radio Art Festival, which is hosted by Rádio Zero in Lisbon, Portugal.
Originally commissioned and created for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High – a suite of audio works relating to the Clyde River curated by Minty Donald for GI Festival of Visual Art – Lateral was made as a live, site-specific installation set in Dixon Street, Glasgow. Subsequent to that event I created a studio version of the work.
Dixon Street is a main thoroughfare that runs from the river directly up through the city’s main shopping artery. The aims of the work were to highlight a sense of disconnection from the river and to create multiple cross currents by merging the river sounds of Lateral and the sounds of the city environment. The work was projected over large horn speakers mounted in the street between two buildings, creating a view down to the river. Six vocalists added a further layer of human presence with their resonant tones both emerging out of and being subsumed by the undulating sound density of the site.
The starting point for the work was the idea of a ‘Lateral System’ – a system of navigational aids comprising shapes, colours and numbers, used to guide boats up river channels into ports and docks. However, the multiple resonances of the word ‘lateral’ took on greater significance in the work through the associations and digressions that emerge with the notion of a flowing river. Place names, numerical information from tidal charts and signal/radio sounds serve as signposts along the way, rooting the work in a real world place. But the perpetual flow of water and the periodic rhythms of a vocal landscape contribute to a sense of multiple spatial and historical resonances, and to ideas of flowing with and against the current.
Many thanks indeed to Claire Docherty, Kirstie Edgar, Jessica King, Morag Stark and Hanna Tuulikki for their live vocal contributions both on site at Dixon Street and at the closing event in the Clydeport Authority Headquarters.
2016
‘Inter-#6’ (Glasgow)
Curated radio show ‘Glasgow Soundscapes’ WebSynRadio (France)
2015
Curated listening hour at Brooklyn Acoustic Ecology Festival (US)
LOLG project Shona Island (Scotland)
2014
(25 Feb – 2 March)
Here. now. where? Saout Radio, 5th Marrakech Biennale
(12 – 18 January)
Framework Radio broadcasts
12th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
13th amsterdam, nl ::: concertzender
13th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
14th south devon, uk ::: soundartradio 102.5fm
14th maribor, si ::: radio marš 95.9fm
15th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
15th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
16th coimbra, pt ::: rádio universidade de coimbra 107.9fm
16th lisbon, pt ::: radio zero
17th ljubljana, si ::: radio študent 89.3fm
17th brussels, be ::: radio campus 92.1fm
17th vancouver, us ::: radio nouspace
18th london, uk ::: resonance 104.4fm
18th new york state, us ::: wgxc 90.7fm
18th brasilía, br ::: rádio paisagem
2012
Foldover, WOBC 91.5 fm, Ohio
Time/Zones, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin
AIR/EAR Installation, Radio-System, Argentine
High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Dixon Street, Glasgow
High-Slack-Low-Slack-High, GI Festival, Clydeport HQ, Glasgow
An excerpt of Sustenance has been selected for the Deep Wireless 7 CD produced by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA), as part of the annual Deep Wireless festival in May, a month-long celebration of radio art. NAISA is based in Toronto and produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art.
