Chris Watson

Christopher Richard Watson is a Sheffield-born musician and sound recordist specialising in natural history. He was a founding member of the musical group Cabaret Voltaire, and Watson's work as a wildlife sound recordist has covered television documentaries and experimental musical collaborations.

Watson was a founding member of two influential experimental music groups, Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio.

He has released three solo albums of field recordings: Outside the Circle of Fire, Stepping into the Dark (which won an Award of Distinction at the 2000 Prix ARS Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria), and Weather Report.

He has also released a variety of works in collaboration with other artists, including Star Switch On, a collaboration with Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic, Philip Jeck, Hazard, Fennesz, AER and Biosphere. In 2007 he released Storm with BJNilsen, and in 2011 "Cross-Pollination" and "El Tren Fantasma". All of these recordings were released on Touch.

2003's Weather Report was named as one of the thousand albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian.

His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television. His television work includes Bill Oddie Back in the USA and Springwatch.

In 2006 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Technology degree by the University of the West of England "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to sound recording technology, especially in the field of natural history and documentary location sound".

In 2010 he devised an art project at Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital, using sound recordings made by children to calm other young patients as they received injections and other treatments.



The Musiara Gate - Touch Sampler 2


Mara River At Night - Stepping in to the Dark


Demonic Laughter - Touch Sampler 3


Out Of Our Sight - Outside the Circle of Fire



Selected radio programmes:

The Reed Bed - Series of five, fifteen-minute radio programmes, broadcast on Radio Four from 19–23 March 2007.

A Guide to Garden Birds - Series of five, fifteen-minute radio programmes, broadcast weekly on Radio Four from 22 May 2007.

A Guide to Farmland Birds - Series of five, fifteen-minute radio programmes, broadcast weekly on Radio Four from 22 August 2011.


Selected album discography:

Stepping into the Dark (1996, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

Outside the Circle of Fire (1998, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

Weather Report (2003, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

El Tren Fantasma (Chris Watson album) (2011, Touch (UK) Touch Music)


Selected collaborations:

Star Switch On with Mika Vainio, Philip Jeck, Hazard, Fennesz, AER, and Biosphere (2002, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

Number One with KK Null and Z'EV (2005, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

Storm with B. J. Nilsen (2006, Touch (UK) Touch Music)

Cross-Pollination with Marcus Davidson (2011, Touch (UK) Touch Music)





Further information here, here and here.

Archival Event (04/01/2010): The Wire Salon, Revenant Forms: The Meaning of Hauntology

"A new series of monthly salon-type events, hosted by The Wire magazine, and dedicated to the fine art and practice of thinking and talking about music. The evenings, which will take place on the first Thursday of each month, will consist of readings, discussions, panel debates, film screenings, DJ sets and even the occasional live performance.

For the first event in the series, Revenant Forms: The Meaning of Hauntology, Mark Fisher (K-Punk), Adam Harper (Rouge’s Foam ) and Joseph Stannard (The Outer Church) will discuss the essence of the spectral, uncanny qualities of much contemporary audio, from dubstep to hypnagogic pop and beyond.

The night will also include screenings of a number of short films by Julian House (Ghost Box, The Focus Group), which feature soundtracks by Broadcast, Belbury Poly and others; a live set by Moon Wiring Club; and eldritch vinyl interludes courtesy of Mordant Music".


'Revenant Forms: The Meaning of Hauntology' took place at London’s Café Oto, New Music Venue | 18 - 22 Ashwin St | Dalston | London | E8 3DL, on April 1st 2010. Thanks to Richard Thomas at Resonance 104.4FM for the audio.

TV: The Stone Tape

Peter Brock: [on analyzing a ghost by electronic means] "Let's say it's a mass of data... waiting for a correct interpretation"

BBC2, 25/12/1972. 90 minutes, colour.

Director - Peter Sasdy. Production Company - BBC. Producer - Innes Lloyd. Script - Nigel Kneale.

Cast: Michael Bryant (Peter Brock); Jane Asher (Jill); Iain Cuthbertson (Collinson); Michael Bates (Eddie); Tom Chadbon (Hargrave).

Jill drives to the mansion now being used by Ryan Electric products and is almost crushed by two of their removal vans as she enters the grounds. Collinson meets Peter as he arrives and the rest of the research team arrives shortly afterwards. Peter shows them around their new top-secret research facility. They are to work on a new type of recording medium in attempt to beat the Japanese competition. Jill will correlate their research using complex computer programmes. Collinson tells Peter that the computer storage room isn't ready after all. The men have refused to do any work there. Peter pulls off some of the rotting wood panelling and reveals a set of stone stairs that don't seem to go anywhere. They have apparently been there since Saxon times and the house has been built around them. Jill, left alone, suddenly hears a scream. She collapses and is helped by Peter and Collinson. Peter is convinced that she is subconsciously trying to get his attention as he has been cooling off from their affair recently.

Peter takes Jill to the local pub and Alan, who works there, admits that he used to play at the mansion as a child. They go to see the vicar, who tells them that the previous owners made an application for exorcism.

Collinson confirms this, explaining that it was granted in 1892, two years after the death of the maid Louisa after falling from the stairs in the room.

As the workers refuse to refurbish the room, Peter, after hearing the screaming himself, decides to find out where it comes from. The team attempt to record it, but their equipment only registers them, not the screaming. Jill, however, actually sees Louisa at the top of the stairs. Alan is invited to visit, but he flees in terror once the screaming starts. He says that when his friend Jacky was inside, he was visited not just by Louisa but also by others.

Jill calculates that there have been 8,000 appearances since Luisa's death. The team try again to record the phenomenon using heat sensors, but are again unsuccessful, although this time two people see the maid.

Crawshaw is developing a new washing machine for Ryan but Peter won't let him use any of his space. Jill has a breakthrough, positing that the room itself acts as a recording device but that it depends on the individual's sensitivity. Peter tries to control the visitations with vibrations and pushes his team to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Pushed by Ryan, he has promised to deliver results soon. Jill's computer starts typing out individual words like 'pray' and 'soul'. When Peter's experiments fail after bombarding the room with sound, it becomes clear that he has, in effect, 'wiped' the recording from the stone.

Crawshaw is installed by Ryan in the mansion as Peter's results have been to slow in coming. The men go back to fitting out the room for the computers now that the screaming has stopped.

Jill is now sure that Peter has only erased the top layer, and there is something far older beneath it that he may have energised with his experiments. He refuses to listen to her and insists she take some leave.

Jill goes to the room and is surrounded by ancient elemental forces. She goes up the stairs and reaches an ancient sacrificial site that used to be there. She falls to her death. At the inquest, Peter says that she was unstable. He has all her work shredded as she was exploring the possibility of looking at elements from 7,000 years ago. He refuses to take any responsibility for what happened to her, and Collinson hits him. Peter visits the room again and is pursued by the sounds of Jill screaming for his help.

Watch The Stone Tape here. The Stone Tape: Screenshots.

Psychogeophysics

The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones --in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around --above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Edgar Allen Poe; The Fall of the House of Usher.

Psychogeography can be defined as an examination of the total effects of geography and place on the individual.

Psychogeophysics expands this artistic research to embrace geophysics, defined as the quantitative observation of the earth's physical properties, and its interaction with local signal ecologies.

Psychogeophysics proposes a series of interdisciplinary public experiments and workshops excavating the spectral city and examining the precise effects of geophysical/spectral ecologies on the individual through pseudo-scientific measurement and mapping, algorithmic walking and the construction of (experimental) situations.

Introduction:

With psychogeography easily defined as a playful examination of the total effects of geography and place on the individual... “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”. Guy-Ernest Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955. Psychogeophysics extends such research to embrace geophysics, defined as the quantitative observation of the earth's physical properties, and its interaction with local spectral ecologies. Geophysics equally encompasses archaeological geophysics, with measurement of such properties allowing for the mapping of previous traces through techniques of particle/wave detection and data forensics. This extension of psychogeography into geophysics implies a collision between interpretation (fiction) and measurement, with Psychogeophysics proposed as a novel discipline that bridges any such distinction through the medium of code, and offers a speculative take on the future of code as an uncovering of its locative (diagnostic) potentials leading to a new phase of software studies.

History:

The term “Psychogeophysics” was first used explicitly during a research group conducted as part of the Transmediale.10 festival, Berlin in February 2010, entitled Topology of a Future City. Psychogeophysics names a direction in which many artists and researchers have explored in recent history. The first Psychogeophysics summit took place in early August 2010 in London, assembling an international group of artists, researchers and theorists to promote this novel discipline with a series of public oriented experimental workshops and seminars investigating various psychophysical fictions within East London.

Techniques:

1 - Excitation and measurement of various substrates.
2 - Provision of a carrier and its subsequent detection.
3 - Scrying (long-term analysis of geophysical indicators).
4 - Data forensics/sedimentation.

Although very much in its infancy new techniques suggested by psychogeophysics revolve around two core principles or methodologies: detection (in all its senses), and the pairing of excitation and subsequent measurement.

These techniques include:

1 - Navigation by way of wide band signal intensities (for example, using simple detection devices to navigate towards parts of the city with lower measured signal strength).
2 - Identification and exercise of sites of execution and memory (for example, measurement of impedance, and chemical properties of local substrates).
3 - Rendering executable of city walks and locations.

With thanks to Psychogeophysics.org

Further information here, here and here.

La Musique des Sons #2

Welcome to the second in a series of musical snap-shots, entitled: La Musique des Sons. Unable or unwilling to expand on the whys and what-fors of a particular artist/project, etc, two for one seemed like the way to go. Less is in no way more, but maybe less is enough.

On this occasion we're looking at the work of sometime visual artists Canell & Watkins, recording as Champagne Diamond​-The Brilliant Light, and Michigan 3-piece SALEM.

First up is Champagne Diamond​-The Brilliant Light, followed by SALEM...

Nina (born Växjö, Sweden, 1979) and Robin (born Stockholm, Sweden, 1980) have committed various recordings, to various formats, under various aliases: Luftkluster, Luftfluks, The New Heat & Obscured by Light.

On this occasion we're focusing on the LP/CD: Champagne Diamond​/The Brilliant Light: S/T. Originally released on vinyl, by CF Records, in 2007, then re-released by Kaleidoscope Records, in 2008; re-housed in a 7″ sleeve with 2 x CD (Champagne Diamond & The Brilliant Light, respectively) and a foldout poster (seemingly based on a patterned jumper). I even get a flyer, advertising forthcoming releases on Kaleidoscope.

I've no recollection as to how I became aware of Champagne Diamond​/The Brilliant Light, or how I came to be in possession of this little piece of art, come to that. I certianly wasn't aware of Canell & Watkins' previous work in sculpture and film. However, now that it is in my possession, and has been so for some time, whenever I return to it, it feels like I'm discovering it afresh - unraveling it - very, very slowly.

Disc One (Champagne Diamond): (1) Champagne Diamond, (2) Scatter & Yearn, (3) Fly The Radio Sky, (4) Rot, Get Soft, (5) Separate Members, (6) Build & Leave.

Disc Two (The Brilliant Light): (1) Morasko Circle, (2) Red Earth, (3) Moro the Black Dog.

k-is-for-kaleidoscope. K*CD002. 2008.

"Across the delicate and lovingly produced album, bittersweet boy-girl vocals interweave with found sounds, minimal guitar lines, and numerous bits of exotic instrumentation to devastating effect. The reverse of the release sports a list of soundmaking devices that reads like the components of some kind of incantory ritual, spanning from the traditional – acoustic guitar, Chinese hand-drum – to the mysteriously ambiguous – water, BKC bicycle – and the specifically strange – Marsona Sleep Machine, Mr Riyaz Tabla Machine. Well, the spell seems to have worked, leaving traces of strange magic all over this intimate and singular release..." this is offset, 2007.

"The first song, “Champagne Diamond,” instantly captivates with an entrancing vocal melody that first rises and then jaunts in a way that vaguely recalls Eno-circa-Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy in style and timbre—not a bad way to get things started, especially when the song slows to a lovely waltz at its end. “Scatter & Yearn” pairs, yes, a yearning vocal with acoustic guitar but the vocal's played backwards, an unexpected choice that lends the already-melancholy song an alien beauty (it turns out to be an Irish folk vocal lifted from a found quarter-inch tape). “Rot, Get Soft” serves up a rippling mass of campfire hums and fractured guitar smolder, while “Build & Leave” is what might happen had the duo handed over its rickety gear to barnyard animals and assembled the results into a two-minute collage. The more instrumental-oriented second disc opens with three minutes of cavernous pops and drips (“Morasko Circle”) before the material detours into two long-form tracks: “Red Earth,” a trippy folk-jazz jam for hand percussion, bells, acoustic guitar, saxophones, and assorted other noises; and “Moro the Black Dog” which backs Anthony Watkins' text reading with Alex McMahon's saxophone bark and flutter, among other things. In truth, disc one's the stronger of the two but the release holds up despite the variance. It's tempting to offer “psych-folk” as a description but it falls short at capturing the “strange magic” that runs throughout this unusual release..." Textura, 2009.

Champagne Diamond - Champagne Diamond



Champagne Diamond - Rot, Get Soft



The Brilliant Light - Morasko Circle

At last count, there were at least 10 bands with the name Salem. I think we can understand why a band would want to name themselves after the city of Salem (Essex County, Massachusetts, USA). There's the Witch Trials for a start, and then there's Tobe Hooper's 1975 film Salem's Lot. The name has baggage. I can't really say why this particular band chose the name, but let's just say, I don't think they were unaware.

Salem are often categorised as Witch House, Darkwave or Drag. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Witch House: "Witch house (sometimes referred to as drag) is a music genre. The term witch house started out as a joke that was originally used to describe occult-based house music by Travis Egedy (commonly known by the stage name Pictureplane) and his friends in 2009. As the internet meme grew in popularity, shortly after being pitched to Pitchfork Media, blogs and other mainstream music press began to actively continue the use of the term for marketing purposes, and thus now the label is loosely used to describe a subgenre of industrial music".

Although there are some similarities between Salem and other acts categorised as Witch House, no two Witch House bands are particularly alike. Generally speaking, people who appreciate Salem's work tend to be a happier with either no real categorisation, or, at a push: Drag. The categorisation Drag, as a descriptive term, seems far more apt, as the music often crawls along at a sluggish pace. Salem's music rarely gets above 70 bpm, slow synthetic strings snake their way around drum machine rhythms, topped off with either distant female vocals, smothered in delay, unspecified vocal samples, or slurred southern style rapping. Oh, and not forgetting, usually everything is distorted, to a lesser or greater degree.

Band members John Holland, Heather Marlatt and Jack Donoghue, all hail from Michigan state, but illusions to American 'southern' culture surface in Salem's work (images, videos, southern style rapping, etc), time and time again. For instance, their music would make the prefect alternative soundtrack to another of Tobe Hooper's films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The same kind of claustrophobic and foreboding atmosphere that pervades, lingers here too, like an eerie fog. However, that's another film, for another day.

Frost - Download



I'm Still In the Night - Download



Radiohead - Reckoner - SALEM remix



SALEM Discography @ Discogs here.

A selection of SALEM's DJ Mixes:

XXJFG, 2009.

We Make It Good Mix Series Volume 11, 2009.

I Buried My Heart Inna Wounded Knee, 2010.

Raver Stay Wif Me, 2010.

Sleep Now My One Little Eye, 2011.

Bow Down, 2011.

Mother Always, 2011.