I'm an award-winning composer, engineer and historian of technology. I present talks, make radio shows and perform live with Spacedog - my band of humans, theremins and uncanny robots.
After many years exclusively playing live, my award winning human, theremin and robot band Spacedog have launched our debut album. It’s called Juice for the Baby and you can listen to the whole album, download it or buy a physical CD here.
Spacedog creates live music for theremin, vocals, saw, percussion and our famous uncanny musical robots. Our work reflects our obsessions with defunct machines, faded variety acts and the darkest English folk tales.
Exciting news! After several years playing exclusively live, Spacedog are releasing our first album. It’s called Juice for the Baby and it’ll be available as a download and on CD from mid-December 2011.
Three photos of Spacedog’s afternoon at BAFTA, where my performance on theremin was enhanced by a gorgeous psychedelic lightshow, created by artist Julian Hand. The lighting effects were all created live, in 1960s fashion, using physical odds and ends. The speckles you can see in this black-and-white photo were created by passing light through a colander. Out of shot is Stephen on bells and Jenny and Hugo the robotic vent doll on vocals.
Our performance was for the London Short Film Festival, curated by Rushes and Soho Shorts. We were there to accompany a session by Arthertz and Ridley Scott Associates, who were showing their new short film, Sonus.
Dancer Louise Colborne is reimagining the famous butterfly dance of Loie Fuller in a new film to be screened at this year’s Latitude Festival. Dancer at the Folies Bergère at the turn of the twentieth century, Fuller was a pioneer of multimedia performance. She projected coloured lights and images onto her voluminous, silk dress and used sticks inside her sleeves to extend the apparent length of her arms, creating an other-worldly, butterfly-like augmented human form.
Last week Louise and I met at the Speaky Spokey, a brilliant new spoken word event in Brighton. When Louise saw me play a short theremin set at the end of the night, she was struck by the resonances between the movements of a thereminist and those of early cybernetic dancers such as Fuller. So today, Louise recorded me playing the theremin. She’ll weave sound and video of my performance into her film of the reimagined butterfly dance – you can catch it at one of the short film nights at Latitude this year. Judging by the still below, showing Louise in action, the result should be compelling and eerie. I very much hope to make it to Latitude myself in 2012.
Talking Canaries and Voices of the Dead
In December 1877, a journalist writing in Scientific American noted there was a now ‘a startling possibility of recording voices of the dead’. He’d just witnessed Edison recording sound on his new invention: the phonograph. And in 1922, a New York radio station switched on the microphones, exited the studio and broadcast nothing but dead air. To mediums and suggestible listeners tuning in, the crackling radio static was alive with voices from the other side.
Radio and gramophones are transmitters of disembodied voices, a feat that seemed so remarkable to the first users, it inspired some curious claims about the paranormal and unlikely alliances between scientists and diviners of the spirit world. In this talk and live demonstration, I’ll explore some of the stranger obsessions of the early adopters of these sound machines, as I immortalise a voice from the audience by recording it on wax, using an original Edison Standard Phonograph.
This event includes tales of ventriloquism, trained budgies, fake psychics, dead air and a little-known curiosity from the eighteenth century, one which may have been used to record short segments of sound 150 years before the phonograph. I’ll perform some live ‘aether music’ and play genuine voices from the grave: ’message records’ posted by soldiers who were lost in battle in the Second World War.
Spacedog are thrilled to be participating in Sonus, an homage to the analogue age and incandescent light for the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. Filmed in a secret location in Chelsea, this short film was devised by Arthertz and filmed by Ridley Scott Associates. It explores many of our shared obsessions with early analogue technology.
Here is a preliminary still from the film shoot, showing Spacedog vocalist Jenny Angliss as the medium, channelling ‘the other side’ through radio static, aided by her incandescent light. I’ll be providing some incidental music, composed of theremin, radio static and bells (bells performed by percussionist Stephen Hiscock).
As I explained in my recent salon talk Ghost Radio, gramophones and radios are transmitters of disembodied voices – a feat that seemed so remarkable in the early 20th century, it lead many people to think these new machines could explain telepathy and ghosts.
Film geeks please note: Sonus was recorded on RED cameras, fresh from the latest Alien shoot. It’s going to look gorgeous! You’ll be able to see it for yourself at the Rushes Soho Short Film Makers’ Market, BAFTA, London on Sunday 24 July.
AWARDED BEST MUSIC EVENT OF BRIGHTON FESTIVAL AND FRINGE 2011
“It felt like an audio version of The Shining, played on instruments thrown together in sheds somewhere near Bletchley Park
…mediaeval electronica meets Trip Hop meets Tomorrow’s World. Superb.” Read a review from Tirimasu, Fringe Review
Eerie musicians Spacedog summon the spirit of John Logie Baird as they perform with flickering projections, created live on their working reconstruction of Baird’s original 1920s televisor.
There will be a crackle of static as Fringe regulars the Angliss sisters evoke the earliest days of television in their new evening of deliciously unsettling music. Televisor is the latest retro-futuristic treat from their band Spacedog, mixing theremin, saw, vocals, waterphone and live action from the group’s famous, uncanny musical robots. And this year, their music is given an extra kick from tip-top percussionist Stephen Hiscock (Ensemble Bash).
Technically cranky, faltering, and even a little dangerous, Baird’s televisor was a world away from the bland plasma screens we see today; a perfect match, in fact, for Spacedog’s trademark, homespun electronica, haunted by an analogue past.
Highlights include a new torch song for variety star Tommy Cooper and a high-energy anthem to the awe-inspiring Soviet Ekranoplan (aka The Caspian Sea Monster).
“A word of mouth wonder”, the Londonist.
“Like a classic surrealist object from a dream”, FAD magazine
“Spacedog…generate the kind of gore-free spinechilling terror that mainstream cinema seems to have forgotten”, the Londonist.
Our Televisor shows at the Brunswick are now over – thanks to everyone who came along – but we’ll be reprising the Spacedog set at Bom-Bane’s Tuesday 24 May. Please note: The Bom-Bane’s show will not include a guest spot from our dear friend Professor Elemental as he will be strutting his stuff at the Steampunk World Fair, New Jersey, USA.
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, is here! I'm ducking out of the Kinetica Art Faire this year but am huddled indoors, writing, sleuthing (investigating a recording in the archives) and devising a new biologically-inspired musical instrument - all will be revealed soon.
News: December 2011
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, launches in mid-December. Join us for the launch gigs at the Marlborough, Brighton, on 9 December and the Horse Hospital, London, on 14 December.
News: November 2011
A busy month writing and editing the forthcoming Spacedog album - stay tuned for news.
News: October 2011
I'm focusing on my writing this month (so am quite the hermit) but I'm squeezing in the occasional live performance here and there.
I'm looking forward to working with Helen Keen in her Spacetacular on 20th. I'm writing a code-based work for the new label Chordpunch and some owlish music for that fine wordsmith Professor Elemental.
Spacedog are booked into the studio at the end of the month to complete work on our album.
News: September 2011
A busy month writing, preparing a get-together of maker musicians for the Brighton Maker Faire After-show party. I've also been electrifying a teapot for the Chi-Tek - an exhibition by MzTek of female tech artists at the V&A. And with my fellow Spacedog Stephen Hisock, I made an appearance on the 10th Anniversary edition of BBC Click.
News: August 2011
The Spacedog song For Laika is now available on iTunes (and the album is on its way). Meanwhile, we've been busy preparing our set for Green Man, including the first outing of our torch song for Tommy Cooper.
I'm procrastinating over a teapot which I'm going to electrify for a MzTek event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.
I took a short trip to a very rainy Edinburgh Fringe where I played at an event for Edinburgh Skeptics in the Royal Observatory and made some plans for a Spacedog show next summer.
Apart from that, I've been busy writing. More news on that shortly, I hope...
News: July 2011
I'm interviewed by Leila Johnston in this month's Wired UK magazine and will be appearing with my fellow Spacedogs at a Wired: The Future of Music on 20 July.
I've rounded up a bumper crop of links and soundclips for my BBC Radio 4 doc The Bird Fancyer's Delight, which is broadcast on 5 and 9 July and is also available on Listen Again. Thanks for all your cheery emails about the doc, to ProjectMoonbase for mentioning it in their podcast PMB038 and for the many national papers who gave the documentary such lovely reviews - I'm glad people enjoyed it! On Sunday 10 July, the doc was featured on Graham Seed's Pick of the Week (Radio 4). A good week!
My latest collaboration with Richard Wiseman is a free and fun magic trick for your iPhone. It's called Paranormality and it's been put together for the launch of his book by the same name in the US. Thanks to Phillis on Derrren Brown's blog for giving the app a mention - thousands of people have now downloaded it and are busy bamboozling their friends.
News: June 2011
Playing theremin for Louise Colborne's homage to Loie Fuller (pioneering cybernetic dancer c1900) and composing sounds for Sonus, an homage to the analogue age with Spacedog, ArtHertz, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and Ridley Scott Associates. Discovering how easy (or difficult) it is to publicise events in 2011 without Twitter - will report back!
Getting ready for BEAM - a brand new festival of electronics and music at Brunel University (24-26 June). I'll be speaking, running a workshop on optical flow and performing live with my fellow Spacedogs. I'll also be playing a short theremin set at the Speaky Spokey, a new arts salon in Brighton (Wed 22 June).
Putting the finishing touches to a sonic-themed BBC Radio 4 documentary, with producer Neil McCarthy, due for transmission on 5 July 2011.
Presenting a workshop for Hack Circus at Interesting, in the Conway Hall, London, 18 June, and performing theremin at a family day at the Science Museum, 19 June.
