Zuppa Inglese, the Italian for custard or trifle, is the third release by Lapslap on Leo Records. As before, it is a varied concoction of ten improvisations combining acoustic and computer-based instruments. However, the usual line-up of brass, sax, keys, and computers has been augmented by the long-time collaborator Mark Summers who is heard on viola da gamba.

Just One Kiss – The Fall of Ned Kelly: about the sound

Live performance, Filmhouse, Edinburgh 7th November 2009

‘One can say that every narrative feature film has been essentially the same since 1906 and the self-standardizing storyline has become a language in itself which we expect to read in any sequence of moving images. In Just One Kiss – The Fall Of Ned Kelly I have attempted to invoke our interpretive faculties to construct this meta story out of unrelated found footage images.’
Sami van Ingen

In response to Sami’s film and the ideas behind it, we took as source material a musical work that also dates from 1906: Charles Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark”.  This 8-minute piece has been stretched out to match the duration of the film and we’re using it to tether Sami’s storytelling to the other sounds that we’ve gathered to play over and around the images.

We didn’t just choose “Central Park in the Dark” because it was written in the same year as “The Fall of Ned Kelly”. The piece is a particularly bold experiment in musical form, constructed as it is from several sound worlds (pieces) that overlap and pass over one another as the music goes on. It makes a plausible case for resisting the conventional musical shapes that became so well established and familiar in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  As Sami’s work attempts to test its own idea, that we can follow the same story through any collection of images, Ives’ piece tests our ability to follow musical layers when they are superimposed.

In the spirit of this film, which is composed of references from across the history of moving image, our soundtrack is made of borrowed and stolen sounds, mostly sourced from YouTube.   Several quotes are culturally iconic and serve to annotate the images in a different way to the inter-titles.  It is a confusing mush, carefully rehearsed and improvised on the spot.

Thanks to Kim Knowles for inviting us to be involved in this project and the Filmhouse staff for letting us loose on their sound system.
Martin Parker  www.tinpark.com
Owen Green  www.owengreen.net

Chiaroscuro / Pentimenti is the culmination of a collaboration between poet JL Williams, composer Martin Parker and artist Anna Chapman.

The two painters’ terms came to our attention in 2006 as intriguing starting points for the making of work that crossed the boundaries of each of our artforms. Chiaroscuro (Italian, ‘light-dark’) is an artist’s technique for synthesising form through casting shadow, while pentimenti (Italian, ‘repentances’) are traces of the artist’s earlier decisions or outlines, revealed as layers of paint become translucent over time.  We took these ideas as departure points for excursions through text, image and sound.

On the disc, published by Fogbank Projects in 2009 and available from me as a limited edition, all sounds you hear were generated from recordings of JL Williams reading her poems.  In ‘Chiaroscuro’ [Track 01], the music is synthesised by literally beaming simple sound sources like white noise and sine tones through the spectra of the voice. this technique was devised in response to the beams of light described in the poem, ‘You, chiaroscuro’.

‘Pentimenti’ [Track 02] was constructed by playing back Williams’ readings of her poem ‘Pentimento’ in many different locations and layering hundereds of recordings on top of one another.The result is a piece composed of the parts of the spectrum usually removed when cleaning up location recordings. As the piece progresses, the noise becomes too much for the sound processors and they begin to clip and beat rhythmically. Through this litter of broken audio, a chorus of voices seems to appear but is just the debris of filters and compressors. A mistake made in the reading during one of the recording sessions has been kept in as a deliberate reference to the technique of painting over (repenting).

The drawings you see here and on the limited edition release were made in response to the content of Williams’ poems, together with some of the processing characteristics of the music described above. Specific references to things, places and events that occur in the poems, including a view from a shop, a fresco in Padua and experiences of light were taken from the text, but their visual source is something relayed through other media rather than seen directly. Here chiaroscuro may be a more private drama of black-and-white dots composing an image for halftone printing; pentimenti the uncertain edges of objects affected by image compression.

The development of the project was supported by the Scottish Arts Council, now known as Creative Scotland.

The Story So Far, 8 min 15 sec

Colour, stereo, 2008

Screening copies DV, Beta SP, DVD
A video by Rob Kennedy, Martin Parker and Sue Tompkins

An Artist’s Film & Video production supported by The National Lottery® through Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.

Screenings:

Upgrade!, New Media Scotland, CCA, Glasgow 2008
Backup_festival Forum, Weimar, Germany, 2008
‘I relish  your balderdash’, Location One, NY, NY, USA 2008

Live performance at the U8 gallery in Nagoya, Japan.  A second performance in completely different circumstances lead to different rhythms and timbres emerging from the loudspeakers.

http://www.leorecords.com/?th=1&m=select&id=CD_LR_516

All tracks on this release were performed live in a single take and recorded during a three-day session at the Reid Concert Hall in Edinburgh, September 7th to 9th 2007. The special acoustic of the hall is featured on several tracks, often with each instrument in its own space (recording purists beware). The recordings were made in surround and mixed into stereo by Michael Edwards and Martin Parker. Surround versions of the recordings will hopefully be made available via Leo’s website (watch this space).

free improvisation ensemble with computers and instruments

www.michael-edwards.org/lapslap/mp3/not-cheddar-but-taster.mp3
not cheddar but from itch, July 2008

lapslap is a free improvisation trio with Michael Edwards, Karin Schistek and me.

Together we make well formed music in real-time with computers and instruments.
We’ve released two records on Leo Records so far; itch and scratch.
Check us out at www.lapslap.net

Martin Parker, Michael Edwards and Karin Schistek recording in September 2007

kjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>
Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik=>Munich=>Glasgow=>Reykjavik

July 6th 2006
Network Concert: circular breathing
Hosted by T-U-B-E Munich http://www.t-u-b-e.de

6pm (Reykjavik) GMT | Martin Parker | Harmonica, live electronics
7pm (Glasgow) BST | Pete Dowling | Sax, live electronics
8pm (Munich) CEST | Christoph Reiserer | Sax, live electronics

Three musicians played together simulataneously in Reykjavik, Glasgow and Munich. Crossing three timezones we attempted to simulate circular breathing, a technique used by saxophone players enabling them to play continuously for long periods of time. A sound began in Munich, traveled to Glasgow and then continued to Reykjavik before being sent back to Munich.

The names of our audience members were different in each country. We invited audience members to type names into our name sampler software. Each name was used to generate a sequence of notes that were unique in each country.

Christoph Reiserer http://www.t-u-b-e.de
Pete Dowling http://www.steadykammer.net
Martin Parker http://www.tinpark.com

Streaming was achieved using the T-U-B-E VST plugin by Dr. Jorg Stelkens http://www.stelkens.de/

I developed a wrapper for the plugin which is an OSX only standalone application. It was produced with research I developed using a research and development award from ALT-W. More details below;

T-U-B-E HOST PLUGIN wrapper;

INSTRUCTIONS The T-U-B-E plugin is quite CPU intensive so it is difficult to use the network and do lots of fancy audio processing on the same machine.
This plugin wrapper is designed to allow you to run the tube plug on one system and send audio for processing on another machine. It should work on any OSX 10.4.6 machine, best to use two pro- audio cards or a digital connection to avoid quality loss between the two machines. You can also record the output and input to disk for post-performance remixing and mastering.
Currently version 0.95

The T-U-B-E SERVER HOST
Is a standalone plugin handler which allows you to create a T-U-B-E server on any net connected MacOSX 10.4.6 machine with port 7172 open. You will need to download the T-U-B-E plugin from here; http://www.t-u-b-e.de/iplug.htm