Pearl Home Records – Live Vinyl Recording

15th October 2022

Mammoth Beat Organ, Graham Dunning and Sam Underwood: Now Sold Out!

Division

Rank

Graham and Sam are the original designers, builders and primary operators of this ingenious machine, best described as a cross between an inside-out fairground organ and an acoustic version of a tabletop electronics setup. It is a unique and eccentric instrument.

The Mammoth Beat Organ is always in development. Performances over the summer of 2022, including at Electromagnetic Field in Herefordshire, will showcase a new bellows system, a polyphonic disk siren and a mechanical bass banjo.

Welcome

24th December 2018

SILKess Demon EP.

Call of the birds

A woman with pockets

Wet woman

Hang me

When I next see you we will both be dead

Lathe cut limited edition of 20, each in a unique sleeve by artist Dominique Golden. Former Jesus Licks band mates Dominique and Nik serve up 5 tracks of lo fi garage folk rock that explore primeval urges and untamed emotions via the guise of snakes and witches. Flutes like you haven’t heard since Jethro Tull went all folk rock. Songs from Epping Forest maybe? Lathe cut by Nik Clifford at home in Walthamstow.

Ross Holloway 2019

24th March 2020

Round Sound by Helen Maurer

new 7inch single. Lathe cut limited edition of 20.

side a: Round Sound

side b: The Singing Pool/Pins Make Me Breathe

I have been slightly involved in ‘Sound Art’ for a little while now and like Helen Maurer have attended Graham Dunning’s Sound Art courses at the Mary Ward Centre near Russell Square. It’s easy to mistake Sound Art for simply being experimental music, and there are certainly fuzzy edges between the two. When the group Einstürzende Neubauten mic-ed up singer’s Blixa Bargelt’s chest and pounded on it to make a rhythm track on early track Durstiges Tier was that Sound Art or just an unusual way of making music? But Einstürzende Neubauten were in the business of making songs, however unconventionally constructed. Similarly there have been noise musicians who have musically left behind musicality in way of melody and recognisable rhythm, such as Merzbow.

Merzbow are a good case in point, being in conception inspired by artist Kurt Kurt Schwitters, and specifically in creating music from ‘junk’. In this way experimental music is intimately tied up with Pop Art. Popular music’s relationship with Pop Art is exemplified by the Velvet Underground, coming out of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and Roxy Music, whose Bryan Ferry not only visited the Factory, but also studied under British Pop Artist Richard Hamilton in Newcastle.

Similarly Sound Art resembles Pop Art in utilising materials not usually associated with aural art-forms like music to create sound that is novel, surprising, interesting, even enchanting or simply enjoyable from what are thought of as generally non-musical sources, from rubber bands and other bric-a-brac, to found sounds or street recordings, over to some things more in the general musical domain such as turntables or old cassettes repurposed to make loops.

The Sound Art made in Graham Dunning’s classes by his students – I wonder whether one day they will be called his followers – is a long way from the ‘noise’ of Einstürzende Neubauten or Merzbow, and tends towards the quirky and playful, mellow and often quite bucolic. Helen Maurer’s work I would place in this category.

Helen Maurer is an artist, as opposed to a musician in her background. There is a sense that she is creating aural sculptures or pictures in sound.

On ‘Round Sound’ she starts with a sound approaching like a motor running, a steam train approaching and then a metal hit. Echoes of a reverb-y room and toys falling and twirling. It’s a bit like a lot less menacing Einstürzende Neubauten (to my ears, although I’m pretty sure that Helen is not familiar with EN), or a dream of a haunted toyshop. I liked it.

On ‘The Singing Pool/Pins Make Me Breathe’ she starts with the a sound evocative of the station-master blowing his whistle, and they’re off with what sounds like a bubble bath choir, with a brief bit exploratory rubber band soloing, and afterwards more pleasant gurgling. Pins takes us down to the basement where strange things are quaking.

It’s all quite enchanting. Is it music in the generally understood sense? Probably not, but it’s rewarding to listen to.

Ross Holloway 2019

Main Content

Sound-Art / Art-Music on limited edition home made vinyl