Oats as the vessel for change. Oats + core imagines what oats can give to the memetic complex of internet and rave cultures. Oats are wholesome. People are ashamed of the wholesome. They rightly criticize it. But are they also afraid of bodily functions?
Currently I am finding MIDI of old Irish melodies, and producing them above industrial bass, with deconstructed reggaeton and club rhythms.
Notes on a lecture from David Toop and Lawrence English on acoustic approaches to ecology.
Toop and English discuss technology as a fascillitator for measuring and understanding the world. Certain technology can “expand the bandwidth we are in contact with.” We can tune in to frequencies that are previously inaudible as a way to reveal something about the world. These tools are tools for navigation on a micro or macro-perspecitve. As an approch to ecology, Toop and English beleive that by revealing previously inaudible information we can change the way people relate to the world.
Our capacities for field recording and acoustic ecology is shaped by the technologies we have available. During the discussion, capacity is discussed in regards to listening. When the capacity has widened, we tend to listen to the flaws of previous work. The flaw becomes more audible as the capacity has changed. For example, many old recorders had to cut out low frequencies due to machine noise. Only certain voices succeeded in hitting the right notes to be audible through the machine. The capacities of technology affect the personality of the media. Toop says that “with every stage of technology we become adjusted to the new normal. It becomes neutral. Then 10-15 years later we see it’s personality.” It is interesting to examine how these personalities are fetishized are marketed by the fashion and music industries. Contemporary artists seem more forward focused.
English discusses his field recording practices. Field recording can be a technical craft, but also artistic. English admires the personal touch that is audible in the recorded. These are imperfections that are audible to the listener, that perhaps create intimacy. “Field recording is about sharing a moment… the listener’s listening… coming to the world through someone else’s ears. “
In field recording we become concious of those events often missed. Technology can expand our experience of the world. Recording is to take a space with you. It can examine our potential of what it means to be human.
There was no time for me to ask my question: How do you feel about the sourcing of materials for field recording equipment and can that contradict the ambitions of acoustic ecology?
Toop and English are passionate about the non-human lifeworlds we interact with. Much of their work could be reduced to ‘climate activism’, but it is more complex that that. I appreciate their ethics and I am curious about how they approach these contradictions of acoustic ecology and the sourcing of materials for field recording. Technology can help us; technology can hinder and destroy us. Perhaps by remembering it as a tool we can use technologies without getting lost in their seduction.
“There is a need for a more activated way of listening to our environment, which can lead to greater awareness of what’s around us. Artists can help with this. Works that help us to experience sound deeply, making us aware of our ears and bodies which listen all the time, are more necessary than ever.” Kamaru.
Joesph Kamaru is a Berlin based sound artist. He is an active field recordist and discusses noise and listening through his work. He is interested in stimulating awareness of the environment through creative composition.
“Within the complex sound specter of our environments and surroundings, sounds are always immersive, proximal, and constantly pushing through our bodies. There is a temporal flux with the sounds of our habitus and daily lives, which most often goes unnoticed and ignored.” Kamaru
His work tends to be surrounded by intellectual narratives. The sound is a medium to carry ideas. For example, he uses subtle variations over time in synthesizers to explore duration, time warp and accelerration. The slower movement of this music can be read as a critique of the hyper-accelerated states of our time. How do we live today, and how can we contrast that pace using sound and music? There is the intellectual narrative of the sound as text, but the complexity of feeling and being is beyond the compartmentalization of language. I feel a sense of peace and clarity as I listen. It is a new intricate peace, rested in the beauty we reach through discomfort. A contemporary peace that remains critical and present, and can never be a full peace. It is an evolution of the new age peace that failed to be critical.
Kamaru has to explain his work to the world with a formula of text to access people, institutions and ways of earning a living. He commented he never directed his music. He would sit in his studio and create, to then analyse after. As my process of composition is quite similiar, I wonder are we objective as creators to translate our music into text? Perhaps it is always an estimation. Perhaps the quality of the music is not ours to claim. I have noticed, when I add exciting words to my work people seem more interested and engaged.
Recently I’m imagining the cultural exchanges of ancient music. How, by studying them, can we grow solidarity between fabricated borders? How do we respect the identities of national populations and their cultures, while exploring it’s place in a wider sea of exchange?
How can we hold onto the past and our ancient knowledge, without perpetuating their systems of oppression?
I’m imagining a folk revial through industrial sound. Can we find imagine a folk music before feudalism, before our tongues were tied and imaginations dimmed?
Perhaps the answer is fantasy, to an imagined past , for construcive futures. I aim to plant the aesthetics of oats into hardcore queer musics.
The key to access the psychotropic forms of being is to reduce that noise we have agency over. By reducing noise, the desaturated environment starts to brighten and we become fascinated by a colourful sentient reality. I’ve found that reducing listening time to recorded music is a way to amplify the music of everyday soundscapes.
We live in a sea. We are soaked in media and images, overlapping symbols and language. We are distracted and cannot focus. Lots of people remain in the sea. Music is often here, an anaesthetic to calm oneself and take oneself inside when the world is a scary place. Living in London requires a gentle anaesthetic to cope with the stimuli. I cannot embrace my fellow neighbours as we march through the tunnels underneath. The city goes deep and blocks the sky with it’s pollution.
How do we reduce noise? Is some noise harmful in it’s materiality? Or is it in the way we approach noise that we harm ourselves? Stoics would say we have free will in how we relate to the world. Perhaps if you bury yourself somewhere deep in the intellect. Some frequencies of sound make the body stressed. Some sounds are too loud. Reducing external noise requires massive changes in the way we live and organise.
The inner world reflects the outer world. The binary of inner/outer is only useful for certain theory and communication. Inner noise often comes from those bodies in pain. Bodies distract themselves from traumas too painful to sit with. We think in words about other places. Is everyone in pain? It seems like pain is unfairly distributed across our species. Some demographics of people experience more harm and danger in the world than others. Some carry more trauma that has been passed over generations. How do we claim presence as a solution, when it’s access is inequal?
Healing occurs in safe spaces. Everyone deserves to heal. Everybody needs someone and deserves protection. Sometimes the safety occurs in a gated community, or absorbed in virtual symbols and images.
I believe healing also occurs outside, and in the reduction of noise we have agency over we begin to learn to be present and comfortable with the environment. The colours begin to lift and in their brightness they heal too. They pull the fascinated body further along a path of recovery.
How do we participate in the collective path of healing? I try to take responsibility of my own pain and to stay present with the world. I reduce those behaviours that numb me when I am able to. Then give attention outwards, and try to accept and support whatever position a friend might be at. To access beauty we must go through pain.
Ugly healing world.
I am interested in Hannah Kemp-Welch’s project “The Right To Record.”
When applying for the disability benefit ‘PIP’ (personal independence payment), disabled people and those with long term health conditions are forced to go to a private company for assessment and validation of their own disability. They are forced to perform their disability in the presence of an assessor. A disability news network reported that that the assessors ‘lied, ignored written evidence and dishonestly reported the results of physical examinations’.
It is presumed that the assessors want to limit the access to PIP. Is this a prescription from higher forces; a government who performs social welfare for aesthetic purposes, but does not actually care about the wellbeing of citizens? And ideology. Within our systems there exists the stigma on disabled people who are deemed as a burden. It is a common inversion of responsibility; if anyone cares to witness a disabled person and their struggle, they might learn that the disability often arises from external limitations; a society, architecture and bureaucracy constructed for “able”-bodied, “legal” citizens.
My mother has MS and now mostly uses a mobility scooter to navigate Tramore, the small town in Ireland where she lives. The scooter has small wheels and it struggles to cross the many potholes and degraded sidewalks. When she first had the scooter, I was able to finally see the apathy and ableism present in the streets I had walked on for years previously. Her struggle is silent unless she can speak. Disabled people must be listened to.
Hannah started this project to give a voice to those silenced people. This is artist as community worker. How does one facilitate, and work with a community they are also estranged from by education, language and aesthetics? Hannah discusses the tensions of aesthetics between a white educated arts student and a working class community. She said that the art was not the final product, a 30 minute audio file, but instead it was the connection with the group.
Community work is a fascinating alternative to individual art projects; ethically they seem juxtapositioned. One can do both.
Sonic experiences with Big Thief. Big Thief is an indie folk band currently releasing and performing across the world.
Five years ago I lived in a farmhouse hostel on the Beara peninsula in Ireland. In this time I was bright and holy and bowing to the world. Once I met a girl from North America, and we were two similiar souls bonding over music. Sitting on the sofa in orange firelight we swapped earphones, listening together, seperately. She shared with me her favourite band Big Thief. I never listened to bands before, I only listened to electronic music. After a week she left due to issues with her visa, but left her imprint on my journey with music. In the mornings I would sit on the edge of cliffs, watching sunrise and listening to Big Thief, tears of joy.
Certain environments allow me to be present: feeling openly in a safe and beautiful space. Feeling expanded and curious about the surrounding creation. Safety and quietness form a soul hyperconductive to the emotions of music.
In London Big Thief became a voice to resonate my internal feelings of loss and sadness. Adrianne Lenker, the lyricist, depicts a tender ecological heart. She calls for responsibility and connection: “The blood of the man who is killing our mother with his hands is in me, is in my veigns.” … “The wound has no direction, everybody needs someone and deserves protection.” The resonance of lyrics through sound is a way to understand ourselves in a world that carries multiple ways of being. Music is often a person’s anchor point to ones identity and mood. Some people listen to folk and trap in the same day. There is hyperfolk music! Music taste has a multiplicity, but it’s borders show a unique personhood.
I saw Big Thief live in the O2 Shepard’s Bush this week. We all piled into the theatre with no script or communicative structures apart from beer. The crowd was warm and innocent, naive. For a moment I felt ashamed of my passion for folk music because the bearded men in plaid looked less cool than the hardcore techno queers and yet the energy in the room was soft, relaxed. The air said RESOLVED. I thought it is nice to have a resolution and go to bed at midnight. The air also carried remnants of the pandemic that wrapped little bubbles around people.
Big Thief came and performed. Adrianne Lenker is a lucid artist and the room was in awe of her, holding their breaths. As a band that makes gentle and restrained acoustic music their live performance as more rocky and this felt jarring for me. As they gained popularity over the years their work became more accessible and I believed that the expectations of the audiences to be pleased was influencing their music output. Adrianne Lenker has a vision to make a better world, so she clearly sees value in making her work accessible to more people. This highlights a question I think about, about the preciousness or purity of art uncompromised. I felt I could still enjoy the work and accept the room around me and the organic mutation of the band as they entered a global music industry. Resisting these developments would be draining and unproductive.
Where we put the line of compromise in our work is a personal choice. I think we can hold back on criticizing an artist for selling out as we cannot imagine the pressure that begin to enclose them as they build a career within a toxic industry. Who makes the industry toxic? The air of resolution I felt in the room contrasts to the current collapse of civilisation. As white western people do we congratulate our interest in folk as a good quality? Did we participate in saving the planet? It is clear there are crushing limitations, on Adrianne, and us as audience/consumers. The sonic experience was pleasurable.