DL’d the Jason Lescalleet excerpt from the Cut and Splice festival as broadcast on R3. Listened to it 3 times and loved every second of it. Interestingly, in a brief interview, Jason mentioned how he’d observed that slowing down tapes appeared to increase the scale of the sound. This is certainly something I’d noticed on The Breadwinner. It then got me thinking that if a tape is reduced to half its speed then a signal at 24 Khz, just outside our hearing range, is then brought into our hearing range at 12Khz. And likewise a low frequency signal at 24 hz will become subsonic; i.e. felt rather than heard (which would explain why the drive units on my speakers flap around on parts of The Breadwinner). Unintentional sounds enter the framework. Reducing tape speed to quarter speed would probably include even more unheard information, intentional or not. This would explain why the scale of sounds appears enlarged.

Fairly simple, obvious stuff, I guess, but interesting and with wonderful sonic results – at least to my ears; the sound of magnetism. Its also interesting to note that Eliane Radigue’s early experiments were with tape manipulation, (reducing tape speed, tape feedback, etc.), before she took delivery of her first synthesiser. I’m really looking forward to hearing some of those CD’s of early material about to be released. I hope you review them, Richard.

The Alvin Lucier clarinet/sine tone piece from Cut and Splice (a Hommage piece) was also sublime and beautiful.

Would have posted this on Richard’s Cut and Splice review from a few weeks ago, but found it locked.

& once you have tasted it plenty of people have a hard time imagining why ? i’m partial to a bit of freshly baked marmite bread myself but Bovril is the thing for spreading !

Marmite? I wonder how many of us in the US (or California at least), have encountered this magical substance … I looked it up and still have a hard time imagining how it might taste.

I reckon if you name the 1000 marmite jar project something like ‘reaction & interaction with the remaining dark matter’ & whip up a 1000 words about the relationship between consumer processes & the active disintegration of European public health, then there’s at least a £10,000 arts council grant in it for you

I’m also interested to hear that Cut n Splice programme. Its here for anyone able to access the BBC iPlayer, maybe the UK only? Not sure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lfhyc/Hear_and_Now_Cut_and_Splice_Living_Rooms_Episode_2/

I like the idea of a work for a thousand empty Marmite jars. Could be fun, especially the work involved in the preparation

I’ve never heard Michael’s work, and I’m looking forward to the forthcoming Cathnor release. From your description, and Michael’s comment above, “Sculpture for the Blind” does sound frighteningly similar (in intent and result) to “Vibra” and “Beat” from Recorded Delivery, and some of the experiments we did in +minus with Bernard Gunter. (And does “The Essence of Things” ring any bells Richard?). But then Mark and I have always considered ourselves to be well ahead of our time (and seriously big )

I’m now looking forward to listening to last night’s Cut and Splice BBC R3 broadcast featuring Alvin Lucier (sine tone work) and Jason Lescalleet.

I promised myself I wasn’t going to post here for a while, I feel I keep derailing your wonderful blog. But its hard not to respond to someone you know and respect who is so dedicated to the cause. I’m also looking forward to you becoming a musician and taking up amplified Marmite containers.

Regarding the sine tones: the strategy is similar to that of ‘Transparent City’ — sometimes one is aware of them, sometimes not, but they always affect the overall sound in some significant if (often) mysterious way. Sometimes, as you rightly guessed, their presence would only become obvious when you would compare a tam-tam sound with a sine tone to that same sound without.