The Wire Magazine: Below the Radar
Delighted to have been invited to contribute a track to Below The Radar 46, out with this month’s issue of The Wire magazine. https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/btr/below-the-radar-46
New album
I’m very pleased to announce that I have a new album coming out on the 16th February 2024. Titled Ashes and Dust, Earth and Sky, LLudw a Llwch, Daear a Nef, it is a solo project that feels like a bit of a shift in direction for me. One of the outcomes of a DYCP grant (thank you Arts Council England) that I received to explore composition using different recording techniques, it uses field recordings collected from West Wales and London, and recordings of saxophones, flutes and other bits and pieces. Part composed, part slowly improvised (I think there’s a difference, but it’s hard to know where to draw this line) over a year, the music explores my sense of the place of a specific little corner of Wales, juxtaposed against the more familiar to me sounds of the city. During the pandemic I yearned for open skies and air and sea, and I spent some time exploring my ancestry, learning that generations of my family lived and worked the land in West Wales, before moving east to the coalfields of South Wales. It made me think of our shifting relationships to land, and how estranged from land and earth I felt two floors up in the city during the pandemic. I feel very fortunate to be able to have the time and space to experience and explore both ends of this UK spectrum. Visiting West Wales, in particular the Gwaun Valley, which remains largely unchanged over the last few hundred years compared to the constantly changing cityscape, and reflecting on the different soundscapes I collected led to the responses, improvisations and compositions that are found on this record. I look forward to sharing it with you early next year. CDs and downloads will be available on my (yet to be created) Bandcamp page, as well as digital streaming services.
Surfacing at Project DIVFUSE
Really thrilled to have my sound piece based on field recordings made in London in Autumn 2022 accepted as part of the Project DIVFUSE open call. It’s my first piece like this, and I made it as part of the last year’s exploration of recording and creating sound with field recordings. It feels really good to have had the opportunity to build skills this year and beging to expand my practice to other areas of working with sound. This project was supported with DYCP funding from the Arts Council England, and I am really grateful for their support. There’s a little more information on the ‘sounding change’ page of this website.
www.divfuse.com
May 2022
I can’t believe we’re entering summer already. This year is particularly marked by the seasons for me as I’ve been lucky to have been awared a DYCP grant by the Arts Council to work on recording and composing, and I shaped the proposed project according to the seasons. I’m writing a little more on my blog (sounding change) created specially for the project, although I must confess I’m discovering what I’ve always suspected, that I’m not really a prolific blogger. I have had my head in recordings and software, though, and it’s been so refreshing to take a new approach to thinking about music. I’ve also been fortunate to travel to Pembrokeshire to make fireld recordings to use as a source.
Gigs seem to be back on! Hurray! I’ve had some highlights already this year, including a trios with Olie Brice and Mark Sanders, and duos with Cath Roberts, Alex Ward, Federico Reuben and Liam Noble. I’m looking forward to start a playing project with pianist Meg Morley next week - it’s early days, but we plan to use loose structures and compositions to shape improvisation. I’ve some nice gigs coming up with Olie Brice and Mark Sanders, with ALex Ward, and a special 40th anniversary celebration of the Wire journal with Black Top. I’ve updated my dates page.
As 2021 draws to a close
The last year, two years (how long has it been?) is, in my memory, and I imagine in the memory of many others, a bit of a blur. This is my first post on a new website, so I’ll mention a few of the nice bits. I’ve released a couple of albums on the very supportive 577 Records. One was my piece written for nonet, I Went This Way. I remember quietly creating the artwork doodle during the very first pandemic lock down, when not a car or a plane could be heard around me in London. The piece was recorded in London’s Cafe Oto pre-pandemic, and it was nice to be reminded of a warm summer evening playing with and to friends. I then went on to release a solo album, Dreamsing. It was never intended to be a lockdown album, and most of the recording took place in January 2020, but given everything went solo not long after I included a couple of lockdown tracks for good measure. I also took the opportunity to Zoom record (a first!) with Corey Mwamba, a playing partnership I treasure, and we released the recording (What we said when we met) on Cafe Oto’s digital label created during the pandemic when performances were put on hold.
It’s been great to get back to playing live in person over the last few months. Highlights have been a couple of gigs with Shifa (Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders), a first gig with violinist Angharad Davies, and a lovely recording project playing compositions by Olie Brice.
I’m also delighted to have been awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from the Arts Council England. I’ve plotted myself a timeline of a year and it started last week. I’m creating a seperate little blog to document some of my activities and thoughts.
