wildeye Iceland field trip

june 2013

Chris Watson (tutor)

Jez riley French (tutor / trip leader)

tate modern....

i'm pleased to announce that my commission for Tate Modern will be available for listening at The Tate Modern from June 22nd for 2+ months & available to experience on saturdays, sundays + thursdays & fridays during school holidays.


audible silence: the tate, sleeping and waking

jez riley french


buildings sing....their walls, their floors, chairs and tables are full of sound, of their own music, made by vibrations, made even by the world turning. these pieces feature only untreated sounds directly recorded with special microphones and listening devices in the tate building itself.

'for this set of 3 new pieces Jez spent several nights alone in the Tate Modern building, listening for hours, capturing moments when the surfaces of the structure resonated or the sounds normally beyond our range of hearing offered up particularly evocative, unscripted compositions'

a few new events added to the diary of what i'm up to in the coming months:

forthcoming:

june 7th: invited speaker, sounding space symposium, Chelsea college of Art and Design, London

june 13th-20th: field recording workshop with Chris Watson and Jez riley French, Iceland

22nd june - 20th august 2013: audible silence: the tate, sleeping and waking' - headphone piece exploring the hidden sounds of the Tate modern building, Tate modern, London

July 11th-14th: workshop, Alghero, Sardinia

July 15th-20th: jez riley french and pheobe riley law @ Stazione Topolo festival, Italy

september 6-8th: field recording workshop with jez riley french & chris watson, norfolk, uk - places available

october 4-13th: installation (room tones / littorals), Spazioersetti galleria, Udine, Italy

october 11th: resonant terrain walk, castletown, portland as part of the b-side symposium

november 23rd-24th: a quiet position: south hill park - 2 day field recording workshop

november 25th: individual tutorials + listening group presentation, Oxford Brookes Uni, Oxford

december 6-8th: field recording workshop with jez riley french and chris watson, norfolk, uk - places available

sigur rós - kveikur (live on jimmy fallon) from sigur rós on Vimeo.

Sigur Ros are currently on their world tour & using JrF c-series contact mics - here's a video their percussionist sent me showing / hearing them in use during their appearance on a US tv-show.

now available for free / donate download:

a quiet position - wired lab

this collection of pieces stems from a workshop delivered at the Wired Lab by Jez riley French in September 2012. Those who attended (+ a few other artists with connections to the site) were invited to submit tracks representing discoveries made. 

In addition, Jez created one of his ‘scores for listening’ for the Wired Lab and this is reproduced in the pdf artwork.

Chris Watson kindly also submitted a track capturing aspects of ‘rolling stock’, one of the projects that Sarah Last & Dave Burraston of The Wired Lab curate away from the main Wired Lab site.

a new piece by Jez riley French is now available on Touch Radio 

http://www.touchradio.org.uk/

it features recordings made on a trip to Australia in 2012 for a residency at The Wired Lab, though these particular recordings are from the Blue Mountains region.

bower floor | dawn chorus with rain | canyon wires

music sits above and under the first impression.
when duration allows these things come into focus, increasingly.
in swifter moments a sense of quietude is possible.
still, finding pace with listening as a lens, moving

new release: 

egcd043

movere (estonia)  |  jez riley french

a residency at Moks in rural Estonia during spring 2009 came at a time where my thoughts about improvising with field recordings and methods of composition where in flux. they always are of course, but it’s fair to say that during 2009 my work was moving in a series of different directions.

. the simplicity and clarity of placing unprocessed single recordings within durational frames 

. the continuing power of hidden sonic elements to create their own compositions 

. the energy of textural intuitive playing . the quietude of audible silence

 . the stillness of movement contained with photography, for scores and more

some recordings, like those in my ‘instamatic’ series, are immediate and work as documents of listening. others take time and drift in and out of ones view. it is some of these later recordings that form the basis of this new release. they have taken time to appear, time to ‘fit’ and time to be fully formed.

motet: from the latin movere, ("to move"), describing the movement of different voices against one another

movere (estonia) begins a new series of works, centered around the word ‘movere’, that focus on ways that field recordings, including those of in-situ responses, act as choral musics - voices of places, objects and actions working with and against one another towards a, still intuitive, compositional line.

movere (estonia) is released on february 11th as a limited edition taiyo yudon professional cd-r, mounted on A5 recycled card.

extract from a longer interview by Sabine Verdely:

SV: I read your words about this release and new series of works and I hear in the pieces that they are not as subtle, in a normal meaning of the word, as I expected. There is more density and impact. Can you talk about this ?

JrF: yes, I understand what you mean. I'm working on some more 'movere' works that are very subtle - a step closer to quietude than, say, the 'audible silence' pieces. However the pieces on this release are a kind of cleansing, a way to say that something from the time of their origin was started and has a kind of trailing light that is still visible in the present.

SV: Is it music of a kind that you don't perform now ?

JrF: hmmm, well, live I always perform intuitively so its impossible really to say what is going to happen. I think though that some of the grain in these pieces, especially the third motet which is the earliest, represents an approach to intuitive composition that I was questioning and, in some ways, I have other questions now. 

SV: I think I am not alone when saying that I think of your work as always being quiet. I am not talking about volume with this. This release is more like the cd you made with Hankil Ryu, yes ?

JrF: well, both that cd (birdcage wallpaper) and the pieces on this one are quite close in terms of when they were recorded or begun, so yes, i'm sure there are some connections, though on the cd with Hankil I am actually playing very quiet sounds.

SV: I know when you are playing concerts you have used the salt a lot for a long time and also paper, but here you make with them a different type of sounds. 

JrF: yes, I think I agree with that. Oddly, I was in rural Estonia and it was very quiet and secluded there. It was unusual for louder sounds or approaches to appear when I was recording. On the second motet though there is a very quiet sound, of fingers, which whilst quite loud volume wise, is actually a very subtle sound. I had the microphones very close to my fingers and so this is perhaps one place where its possible to hear quietness even in something close to the ears so to speak.

SV: I am thinking a lot when I am listening to this cd. I find that some parts are a surprise to me. Did you aim for this ?

JrF: no, not at all. I simply make the music that I like or that seems to arrive. I left these particular recordings alone for a long time. I didn't even have them waiting for a possible release. In fact I was working on another set of pieces and then I decided to listen again to the work from Estonia and I found that the first and third motet now felt 'right' for a release. The second motet was not complete - its actually two recordings and for a long time I didn't know how to connect them. I often find that things find their place in ways that simply just arrive. 

Jez riley French - 'instamatic: czech republic'

eg042

6 pieces, recorded during 2 different trips to the czech republic, featuring conventional and contact microphones & listening glasses.

available as a digital download only - free or donate if you would like to contribute - profits will go towards future releases by other artists. thanks.

all engraved glass and . point engraved digital download releases have been re-priced to £4.99 (for standard releases) or free / donate (for archive and a quiet position releases). This decision comes as a result of extensive research and seeking the opinions of folks worldwide - thanks for the input ! all profits go towards future releases....

http://engravedglass.bandcamp.com/

new book, published february 2013 - includes conversations with Conversations with myself, Manuela Barile, Angus Carlyle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Viv Corringham, Peter Cusack, Steven Feld, Felicity Ford, Antye Greie, Christina Kubisch, Cathy Lane, Francisco López, Annea Lockwood, Andrea Polli, Ian Rawes, Lasse-Marc Riek, Hiroki Sasajima, Davide Tidoni, Hildegard Westerkamp and Jana Winderen. 

cover photograph by my daughter, Pheobe Law (proud dad moment here !)