Just after a heavy downpour. water was falling against these huge doors at a factory in Shenzhen, China. I attached stereo contact microphones and recorded the vibrations of those rain drops and drips resonating through the metal. Those sounds will find their way in to my track, Silo, for Musicity and The British Council.
Musicity China
I've just returned from a truly inspiring trip to China where I've been gathering field recordings and researching buildings for the latest Musicity project. Nick Luscombe (BBC Radio 3) with the support of the British Council, has commissioned a group of artists from the UK and China to create pieces of music for buildings and structures in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
I spent 5 days each in Shenzhen and Shanghai recording with traditional microphones, contact microphones and electromagnetic microphones - Huge factory silos with beautiful reverb, 7 story electronic markets, Maglev Trains, Power Stations and much more! I'm currently back in the studio and working on the first of the tracks for a building in Shanghai that used to be a slaughterhouse. 1933 is a mix of art deco and brutalist architecture and resembles an Escher painting; a maze of concrete bridges and stairways lead to a circular central structure where the cattle met their fate. My plan is to use the shapes and patterns of the building as a graphical score. I also found an interesting document that talks about the Feng Shui, numbers and codes believed to have protected the local population from the negative 'death energy' leaking from the building.
Blood Culture Scoops Silver at British Podcasting Awards
It was lovely to spend an evening with so many audio creatives at the British Podcasting Awards 2018, and see the way the medium is flourishing. I attended with Lance Dann, creator, writer and director of techno thriller audio drama, Blood Culture, which was nominated, and won Silver, in the Best Fiction category.
I now have a list of new podcasts I need to check out.
Blood Culture Drama Podcast wins Gold
Friend and colleague Lance Dann won Gold in the best producer category at the Audible Audio Production Awards last night. Here is what the judges had to say about the series that I contributed music to and was lead sound designer on. It is really exciting to see adventurous audio drama getting recognised.
Blood Culture BBC Drama Awards Nomination
Quite excited to report that Lance Dann's Blood Culture podcast has been nominated in the BBC Radio Drama Awards in the Best Online or Podcast Drama category. This time last year the team were in the studio in Brighton recording the performances of the fantastic cast. I recorded many of those performances, sound designed and mixed 2 episodes and provided music throughout the series.
Looking forward to series 2.
Further performance
A very enjoyable performance surrounded by beautiful slide projections - the Further team setup over 20 projectors covering every wall with visuals, and Sculpture blew everybody's minds with their live zoetrope and tape loop set. I'll share a video of my performance when I get a chance to edit it! Thanks to everybody that worked so hard to make the evening so successful.
© Martin LeSanto-Smith 2017
Buchla Map
I use these sheets to keep track of settings on my Buchla synthesizer. This one is for my upcoming show at Further on the 18th November. For those that are new to modular synths, they are different to modern synthesizers where everything is hardwired inside. A modular synthesizer is made up of different modules all with different roles. It won't make a sound until the right connections are made. This flexible architecture provides almost endless possibilities for sound design and musical timbres.
Further Away - studio prep for live performance
I'm busy preparing material on the Buchla Electric Music Box for the upcoming performance at Further on the 18th November. I'm going to be sharing little snippets of that preparation as I go along with Pete Williams (Further) providing some brilliant visuals. This is the first clip - Further Away.
Further
I'm performing a live Buchla Electric Music Box set in London on the 18th November. Thrilled to be invited to play alongside Sculpture who project mind bending live zoetrope visuals alongside their tape loop compositions. The team of DJ Food and Pete Williams fill the performance space with 'out of this world' projections and liquid light show - I've seen images from the first event and it really is an immersive visual spectacle with every available surface used. Tickets here.
DJ Food & Pete Williams present the second of their irregular evenings at the Portico Gallery by creating a temporary audio visual space to enjoy. Films, slides, oil projections, food, drink and plenty of seating form the environment to soak up the sights and sounds of Further.
Spirit Side Sound Design
I thoroughly enjoyed working with Miniclick Talks, Curtis James and Stanley James Press on their Spirit Side installation. They took over the basement of an old Regency Town House on Brighton seafront and filled it with examples of spirit photography, and I created an 'otherworldly' soundscape that plays as visitors wander around with torches in the eerie space that used to be the servants quarters. Last night an evening of talks took place from the head of the Anomolistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, Prof. Chris French, funeral director Tora Colwill and film maker Vicky Matthews. I performed live before and after the talks and it was great fun 'soundtracking' people's exploration of the space, underscoring their discoveries.
Design by Emily Macaulay
The installation is open until Thursday 17.00 to 19.00.
Here is a creepy video of a 'visitation' in the wine cellar.
Narnain Boulders
An excerpt of a recording I made whilst sheltering under the Narnain Boulders on route to The Cobbler/Ben Arthur in Scotland. We had terrible weather and had to turn back in the end as visibility was so poor.
Photos by Curtis James
Dungeness Field Recordings
A few snippets of some longer recordings I made in Dungeness at the weekend. The landscape is quite strange and there is a sense of entering in to a different dimension as you pass the Army firing range and glimpse the nuclear power station in the distance. These recordings, made using contact microphones, are suitably otherworldly and will no doubt be used within my sound design and music work. I'm looking forward to spending more time in the Dungeness area as there are so many sound gathering opportunities.
Abyssinia Bothy Sound
I recently spent a week wild camping in Scotland with my brother Curtis (who also took some lovely photos). I was keen to gather some Ambisonic recordings and find out if I could hack the outdoor life. I've never really been a fan of camping as I'm a bit too used to my home comforts, but the lure of potential new sounds to record was strong enough, and it turned out to be an enjoyable, if not completely successful trip because we had a fair amount of wet weather which made recording difficult and sometimes impossible. I'd initially planned on getting lots of Ambisonic recordings (even if my brother did think I was mad to carry such an amount of gear in my pack), but I think I ended up preferring the recordings I made with the simple stereo spaced pair setup. I also got a recording of the wind howling through a fence near a remote mountain Bothy we stayed at one night. I used a pair of JRF contact microphones, which record the physical vibrations of an object rather than sound waves moving through the air like a traditional microphone. I love contact mics as they always surprise in the hidden sounds they uncover.
I think I'm hooked on wild camping now too!
Listen below. Headphones recommended.
The Detectives - Murder on the Streets
I worked with composer Andrew Phillips on series 2 of the BAFTA nominated crime documentary The Detectives. The first of four episodes is broadcast tonight on BBC 2 at 9PM.
“The access is staggering, the stories heartbreaking, the storytelling magnificent”
Blood Culture Radio Academy Award Nomination
Just found out that radio drama Blood Culture, that I composed music for and sound produced two episodes of, has been nominated for a Radio Academy Award in the Best Fictional Storytelling category.
Promax Horror Channel
Nice feature in Promax Daily Brief about the recent Horror Channel branding I worked on with director Chris Turner and Holman & Hunt.
The effectiveness of H+H’s Horror Channel rebrand can be boiled down to the following components: 1) A series of 12 stylish, boldly subtle IDs that favor a sense of unease over traditional scare tactics. 2) An extreme minimalist on-screen graphics package driven by frightening red clouds that spread across the screen like a nightmare. And 3) a thrumming, painstakingly crafted soundscape by sound designer Simon James that was made possible because, unlike most channels, Horror does not carry a continuity voiceover.
“One of the great things about this project was having the space to do what we wanted with the audio,” (Richard) Holman said, “because sound is so important in enhancing the mood of the uncanny and unnerving.”
Akiha Den Den album
The Akiha Den Den soundtrack album is now available. Really pleased with the work Nick Taylor has done on the design and packaging. Big thanks to Colin at Castles in Space Records for releasing this odd selection of music and sound design. I was devastated by the loss of a close friend whilst working on Akiha Den Den, and the project gave me the perfect place to escape to.
“This vinyl and CD package collects electronic music created for an abandoned space: Akiha Den Den, the crumbling amusement park at the centre of a surreal radio drama, and the setting for a story woven from the very fabric of radio.”
“Released on a specially requested opaque clear vinyl LP, the physical package also includes a redacted Akiha Den Den booklet (all artwork by Nick Taylor) and a beautiful bonus CD filled with over 70 minutes of Buchla Modular, EMS, drones, dramatics, cassette 4 track abuse and noise from the Akiha Den Den radio series.”
CBS Horror Channel branding
Back in January I completed the sound design for a series of 10 second branding idents, directed by Chris Turner, for the Horror Channel. I'm excited to say that they have now launched, so tune in to see/hear them. Sound wise they are a mix of electronic sound design and foley (thanks to Sue Harding for the fire advice) and I had a lot of fun conjuring up suitably dark sounds on the Buchla Electric Music Box and Oberheim OB-6, of which the latter features heavily in this production.
““When Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson were writing the screenplay for ‘The Shining’ they kept referring to Sigmund Freud’s book ‘The Uncanny’; a book which explores the way an image or scene where something is not quite right can make the skin crawl and quicken the pulse in a much more visceral way than mere shock and gore. We took the same approach. Each of our idents provides the thrill Horror fans love without ever making the source of that emotion explicit.””
Ambisonic Recording in Scotland
I had the pleasure of recording on the East coast of Scotland last week for a project for Salesforce Trailhead. I used the brilliant Sennheiser Ambeo microphone, which records 4 channels and allows for post processing in to various stereo microphone configurations, binaural and most versions of surround. Whilst the technique has been around since the '70s, it has gained in popularity in the VR world recently as the positioning can be linked to head movement within a virtual reality environment. It is one of the only microphone systems that records vertical as well as horizontal, and captures a truly immersive sound space.
Below is an excerpt of a longer recording I made in the rock pools near Dunnottar Castle. (you can just make me out in the image below) The microphone was placed so that water was bubbling and moving all around it and lapping against the rocks. This version is encoded in to the binaural format, which requires headphones to fully appreciate the 'surround' effect.
What is so exciting about this recording technique, is the amount of flexibility once back in the studio. If I wanted to, I could choose to encode this same recording in any number of stereo mic configurations (and directions) or full surround. I'm seriously considering creating some library collections and I'm already planning another trip to Scotland to spend an extended period recording on the West coast.
Photo by Clive Howard/Blue Canary
Delaware Road at Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker
This July I'll be joining a group of like minded electronic sound experimenters in an immersive night of music in a cold war nuclear bunker in Essex, just off the M25, as part of Alan Gubby's Delaware Road music/theatre/fiction project. The star of the evening is undoubtedly the setting; the dusty, eerie tunnels that lead to rooms filled with (thankfully) unused armageddon paraphernalia and the odd mannequin here and there. A fully equipped BBC studio is one of the many oddities that you'll discover wandering around this tomb of false hope and desperation.
Kelvedon Hatch is a chilling time capsule of how the other half might have lived after a nuclear war; where the government, or what was left of it, would try to rebuild and start again.
I doubt they could have imagined the place as a venue to mind expanding electronic music and visuals courtesy of Ian Helliwell, Howlround, DJ Food, Teleplasmiste, Concretism and others, but that is exactly what is happening on Friday 28th July. Tickets (including a an optional bus service) are selling quickly, so don't hang around.
I'll be there conjuring outer dimensional oscillations, spirit invoking modulations and frequencies to welcome all beings with warmth; exploring the sounds that come from deep inner space as they vibrate around the subterranean and spread to the remotest reaches of outer space. From pulsing strobed rhythms and incantation arousing sequences to glacial tone shards and shapeshifting drones; the vast range of the Buchla Electric Music Box will be shared in a 3hr exploratory performance. Here's a little taster....
