Outlying, Occluded, and Thwarted Literature

The previous post here was last year's end-of-year round-up. What of this year? The dreaded minus budget remains a great burden, so there's little to report. More gigs would be nice. And a job, or a bursary for study. It's tough. Maybe the backward-looking (and self-indulgent) act of summarising one's activities over the year has an element of cursedness? To avoid making the same mistake this year, I'll forecast forward instead of recapping backward. Before I do, it's worth mentioning this month Michael Umney won the International URTI Radio Grand Prix for the BBC Radio 4 show 'Knock Knock: 200 Years of Sound Effects' (mentioned in the previous blogpost), produced under the Resonance FM banner. Presented by Sarah Angliss, the programme delves into the acousmatic world of the unseen soundmaker - those people who ply their acoustical contrivances in the shadows for the service of storytelling and drama... and the documentary itself has the immersion of drama to it.

One project I hope to finally bring to fruition in 2025 is my book surveying outlying, occluded, and thwarted literature. One such piece of outlying literature was featured in the aforementioned 'Knock Knock' radio programme: 'Sound effects and how they may be produced' by Alfred Whitman (1926) - a mimeograph not seen in any library. I was first alerted to this internal BBC document by the bookseller Alan Conchar who had handled a copy around 2005. It wasn't until 2022 that I could finally see a copy, after Umney tracked one down in his programme-maker capacity by liaising with the BBC. Like all outlying literature, there are always reasons for the outlyingness. In this case, circulation was limited from the outset in view of sound-effects then being a niche interest, and also that the trade secrets of the sound-effects-person's craft are fully revealed within it.

I've been collecting offbeat books on sound since the early 2000s, and the extent to which something can be so offbeat as to become invisible was first intuited when I came across the excellent book-list compiled by gongsman Frank Perry. It contains unknown/unfindable items, such as W.G. Hooper's 1943 'The Great Musician of the Universe', and - for a long time sought - Margaret Watts-Hughes' two 'Eidophone' books (featured on Miraculous Agitations back in September 2011, where I playfully compare her sound visualisation devices to those depicted in the mysterious Voynich Manuscript). Incidentally, this year I was able to supply some images of my copies for an imminent publication putting Watts-Hughes ideas back into print. As for Frank Perry's list, which has itself become difficult to find (a shame for such a useful resource), it's on the Wayback Machine here. Perry's library of sound and music books spans a hundred years, focussing on the 'suchness' of sound and timbre - it straddles the faultlines between objective and subjective musical phenomena. The further you go towards the subjective, the more esoteric (and contentious) things become. The fizz of discussion surrounding all things contentious is of value for creativity (I argue).

Many years ago, one of my former tutors, Hugh Davies, told me something like this: if you want to find paid work as a writer/researcher, it is worthwhile to become a sort of independent curator by judiciously amassing a personal archive of rare, preferably unique historical ephemera, documents and materials. Sharing one's findings from such a private archive would offer inbuilt originality, and constitute genuinely useful new work. Gathering materials became possible by working/volunteering on the fringes of the antiquarian book trade, and even through bin diving. Davies' advice hasn't quite borne out in practice - work remains scant - although the research-driven Radionics Radio project (funded by Sound and Music) was a successful example.

Examples of outlying literature

But to return to Perry's book-list: it is significant that at the very end Perry states "it goes without saying, that I do not necessarily fully endorse everything listed above". This kind of disclaimer becomes more necessary when dealing with outlying literature. I gradually widened my scope of interest from acoustics to accounts of subjective experience of sound. At the extreme end of this genre are books such as 'Crook Frightfulness' (whose paranoid author I was able to identify), and Dorothy Burdick's 'Such Things are Known' (1982). Despite being published nearly 50 years apart, both titles are very similar autobiographical investigatory first-person accounts of hearing unseen, sinister voices. Both authors reject all diagnoses of mental illness, rigorously pursuing rational explanations, despite the apparently impossible effects described. It perhaps needn't be said that both titles were self-published.

Any self-published piece of writing prior to the internet has inherent dynamism in being an unedited self-propelled bubble of an idea. Of course, self-published efforts can burst through the bubble and find mass appeal - e.g. Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', or Erika Mitchell's 'Fifty Shades of Grey' - but my interest is in the overlooked publications. Often there is some waywardness or uncompromisingness that distinguishes these as 'difficult'. Having developed an interest in 'thwarted histories' and the dynamics of obscurity, I've found there are important stories to be told lurking behind these outliers - sometimes shedding light on marginalised communities, neurodivergence, and how fact and fiction / the objective and subjective intertwine; stories that reflect on the present-day concern with virality, Search Engine Optimisation, struggles to come to terms with modernity, and the eternal search for the optimum angle to interface with a wider public.

'Electromania' in Strange Attractor Journal, 'Radio Obscurity' in Radio Art Zone, and other 2023 doings

Here's the obligatory end-of-year round-up / self-system-redundancy-check... Thrift, resourcefulness and low-budget solutions for soundmaking are a regular theme of this blog, but in a previous blogpost I wrote of the insoluble retrenchments demanded by a 'minus budget' - thrift's underbelly: resourcelessness. Hammering at doors hoping to find publishers and outlets has essentially become head-butting brick walls. Sponsors naturally possess biases towards commercial-viability (and, by extension, superficiality) and now, on top of this, automated algorithms contribute further to this feedback loop of asphyxia and poverty for original research. These are the ubiquitous dynamics contributing to the 'thwarted histories' that I study so gravely.

I always strive to bring new or previously obscured things into public view. Having spent a good portion of my life in bookshops, it's clear that an overwhelming amount of crowd-pleasing regurgitated hackwork is put into print by publishers who should know better (I'm bitter, of course). The ecological footprint of printed matter should be justified by the freshness of the artefact, and sadly this is seldom observed. Without any support, self-publishing is often the only option - a minefield of unforeseen expense; a tentative run of fifty copies of my textbook 'Post-Electronics: The History, Design & Philosophy of Organic Acoustic Modular Synthesisers' was glitched up by printers early this year, leaving me "looking nine ways for Sunday" as an antiquarian might put it.  Just when I began to feel asphyxiated by the situation, later this year there came some blessèd aeration in the form of two very fresh, original and noteworthy volumes...

The first is the long-awaited fifth volume of the Strange Attractor Journal. It contains my well-illustrated essay 'Electromania: The Victorian Electro-Musical Experience' and, among other things, unveils the first known visual "personification" of electronic sound in 1877. Condensed across fifteen pages is a detailed account of my main object of research: Johann Baptist Schalkenbach (whose archive of German and French manuscripts I've recently had translated), his Orchestre Militaire-Electro Moteur orchestrion hybrid, and its electrifying influence on Victorian entertainment... only to be swiftly forgotten. I started researching Schalkenbach and his contemporaries fifteen years ago, and although I keep bemoaning the baffling disinterest academic employers and publishers have shown towards my analyses of it (covered also in 'Magnetic Music of the Spiritual World'), I have at least managed to give this previously unknown amalgamator of music and electricity some internet presence over those years. The Strange Attractor article adds many new elements, reproduces never-before-seen archival material, and examines the distinctions between electrical and electronic music from a Victorian standpoint.

I'm reminded of an anonymous peer reviewer who green-lit my breakthrough essay on 'The Forgotten Work of J.B. Schalkenbach' in 2013's Leonardo Music Journal. They remarked "this article is the 'discovery' of a not-known precursor of electronic sound art (...) Could be a novel." Indeed, there is a resonant story behind Victorian electro-musical endeavour which has great dramatic thrust. Yet there is the recurring paradox - does obscurity beget obscurity?  It does seem so, although the Strange Attractor publication is a stab towards outmanoeuvring this.

Obscurity is also the underlying theme of a text I've contributed to another book: Radio Art Zone. My text is 'On Radio Obscurity and Infinite Regress' and explores unknown/unknowable moments in radio by springboarding off the concept of a space-time radio, as discussed as early as 1928 in a rare in-house magazine for BBC engineering staff, 'Saveloy: An Aerial Magstaff'. Radio Art Zone, edited by Sarah Washington, is a spectacular full-colour hardcover containing new art, photography and texts across various paper types. Its pool of contributors includes many creators of the 22-hour radio shows engaged in Washington and Knut Aufermann's epic Radio Art Zone project. It's one of the most stimulating volumes on radio experimentation ever published, and could function as a possible "field guide" to the niche genre that is radio art (as a recent review suggested). A text by Felix Kubin particularly fired my imagination with its novel and slightly unsettling introduction of the 'radioparasite' concept (i.e. living vicariously through radio, abstracting its sonic nutrients, forgetting one's own corporeality in the process of intense listening).

King Alfaman & Needle Boy (Knut and Lepke B)
Photo by Chris Weaver

RAZ's book launch took place last month (November 4th - also streamed on Resonance Extra) at IKLECTIK (a hugely important but now-imperilled venue), where the project's hallmark of extreme duration was upended: performers were asked to perform for a snappier ten minutes. I performed an exposition on the technique and philosophy of miraculous agitations, coaxing sonic miracles from my electromagnetic apparatuses (which, in keeping with the radio theme, happen to radiate very-short-range actuative EM waves). The short slot wasn't long enough to demonstrate such marvels (miracles take time), but unexpected rhythms and proto-miraculous shudderings emerged, along with shrieks for employment in any paid capacity whatsoever.

At the event, its mastermind Sarah Washington (who also performed ultrasonic gramophonics as Batophone with Lynn Davy) alerted me to two Greek members of the audience who had travelled from afar to see me(?!) perform. They actually expected a different, more famous Dan Wilson - an acoustic guitarist - and they left slightly bemused at my post-electronic apologia. The mismatch was caused by Spotify and automated data-handling scripts linking names to incorrect performers: my name had been auto-linked to another poppier D.W. This could be seen as yet another symptom of the thwarting agencies that conduce to destroy underground culture; a vulgar automated cup-and-ball switcheroo where obscure grassroots performers are supplanted by algorithm-friendly industry-approved namesakes. On the other hand, Sarah highlighted the positive, absurdist Situationist repercussions of this, whereby bewildered pilgrims may be drawn into unexpected novel experiences. Sarah also reminded me that it seemed consistent with the uncanny serendipities that I tend to initiate unintentionally, e.g. another 'crossed wires' moment occurring during Radio Art Zone's 2022 broadcasts, where a radio aficionado - a seasoned explorer of the airwaves - happened to tune into RAZ's 87.8 FM wavelength, catching some of my 'Asphyxia' broadcast (also episodified on Resonance Extra here). Much mystery ensued until the listener at last caught the station's identity via the embedded RDS info. The listener then sent Sarah an enthused message - "I spent the rest of that night recording the station because I was certain I stumbled upon something unknown that needed to be investigated" (a message which is now featured in print on page 175 of the RAZ book). The impulse to record and investigate the unknown is the most precious of impulses.

(I'll resist pondering too much on the unknown causalities behind the odd coincidence, that is: Asphyxia had for its theme the hacking of the British Library information systems, and the suppression of information.. and recently the British Library faced the most serious cyberattack of its history, with its systems still out of action...)

It is also worth mentioning Ed Baxter's contribution to the Radio Art Zone book - 'Rearranging the Furniture' - which traces the underlying animus behind radio through its metonymic instances. One such instance is found in the associative clunks, creaks and whirrs of radio sound-effect-making, where Baxter invokes a name I've been researching for many years: Alfred Whitman - a pioneer of radio sound effect design in the 1920s. "Alfred Whitman" was actually a stage-name of sorts, as he considered sound effect design his 'light' work. I was able to present my research on Whitman earlier this year on BBC Radio 4's 'Knock Knock: 200 Years of Sound Effects' (presented by Sarah Angliss, and produced by Michael Umney and Ed Baxter). Although my appearance in the programme is brief, Sarah Angliss and Michael Umney spent the best part of a day in the BBC's archives with me, examining a document I was first told about in 2009: Alfred Whitman's 'Sound Effects and how they may be produced' (1926).

Alfred Whitman's 'Sound Effects' document

I had to think hard to recall how I learnt of this "confidential" document's existence. Its appearance on my radar came about through lengthy correspondence with an eccentric book-dealer, which highlights that the knife-edge of research is so often situated within the secondhand book trade. The document was mentioned to me by Cardiff-based bookman Alan Conchar (aka Dr. Conker) who wrote that he once had a copy, but that it had sold. Tantalising. It was unlikely another copy would surface, as I soon realised that sound effect design in the 1920s was a secretive affair, somewhat in the manner of magicians guarding their tricks, therefore any technical disclosures would've been rather against Whitman's own interests. There can't be many copies in the public domain, and indeed, libraries currently hold no copies. Enduring wonder so often persists in unobtainability's wake. By sheer serendipity, I was asked to be a part of the BBC documentary, and thanks to the efforts of Umney and Sarah Angliss' enthusiasm, a copy of Whitman's typescript was pinpointed at the BBC's archives (albeit lacking its red covers that Alan Conchar had cited). It is hoped that a re-publication of this groundbreaking manual can be arranged at some point. Whitman's sound effect work has a great bearing on modern post-electronic soundmaking: its mechanical rigours pre-figuring the control circuits of modern electronic soundmaking equipment.

Constant heartfelt thanks to all, and to readers - you - reading this rather hurried posting here.

'Asphyxia: The "Idiote", the Library Wifi and the Suppressed Safe'

At 6pm today (Wednesday 10th May) Resonance Extra will begin a regular episodic version of what was originally a single 22-hour radio show commissioned by Radio Art Zone: 'Asphyxia: The "Idiote", the Library Wifi and the Suppressed Safe'.

Late in 2022 I was commissioned by Radio Art Zone to be a part of their epic 100-day radio art project.  Radio Art Zone was conceived by Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann as a radio station - without any interrupting adverts - relaying massive radio shows internationally, and streaming online.  The length of each 22-hour contribution meant that listeners were plunged deep into sound-worlds, grasping at whatever radiophonic cues were at hand to ascertain contexts, acoustical conditions, geographical locations, themes, or narrative arcs (if any).

I titled my show 'Asphyxia' in anticipation of the suffocating atmosphere that'd likely pervade when smothered by a single person's 22-hours.  Many other Radio Art Zone participants minimised the threat of asphyxia by infusing the oxygen of the outside world - e.g. Chris Weaver (fellow Oscillatorial Binnage member) produced 'Rushy Green Tape Exchange' - 22 hours of cassette diary exchanges with improv artist Adam Bohman, spanning continents in their scope; or more explicitly 'Body Edit Mind' by Milo Thesiger-Meacham saw a vast amount of obscure media found online interspersed with real-life recordings testing the limits of editability.

I confess to not having heard many of the other 22-hour shows in full, and I doubt any listener absorbed my contribution beyond a mere dip.  The new Resonance Extra broadcasts of 'Asphyxia: The "Idiote", the Library Wifi and the Suppressed Safe', commencing today, offer more manageable regular one-hour timeslots.

More properly, 'Asphyxia' refers to the all-too-familiar dynamics that condemn things to obscurity. (Incidentally, I have supplied a text on this theme for an upcoming book published by Radio Art Zone's Sarah and Knut, release date TBC).

The show is described as "a damaged would-be radio documentary exploring the Narnia of restricted access material with its wedded themes of suspicion, gatekeeping, conspiracy, frustration, and the maddening infinite regress that emerges wherever information is suppressed.  It is a journey into the inner turmoil of being forestalled; namely, a condition electronic composer Daphne Oram termed 'mismatched impedance'; - where vocation is thwarted, heralding the onset of emotional disturbance as one's energies are clipped and distorted."

The "Library Wifi" refers to the 'hackable' streams of data passing through The British Library's network, whilst the "Suppressed Safe" is the British Library's restricted access material.  Overshadowing all this is my controversial "work where you like" practice whereby I trespass into workplaces where I've been denied employment to "volunteer" my services to prove my employability. The "Idiote" signifies the person in the street, as opposed to the "Clubman" - the patriarch in-the-know; two terms crystallised in the Edwardian era by paranoid ex-accountant turned amateur etymologist, Marcus Stanley Chambers (aka "Exact Thinker"), who wrote scathingly of uncooperative national institutions withholding (supposedly) secret knowledge on the origin of language.

Marcus S. Chambers' illustration

There is an undercurrent of thwarted research and wasted energies throughout the series. Abused necks - seats of human voice - are given special attention in today's first episode - anatomical points of interest in the work of Marcus S. Chambers, and his anarchist, masonic-secret-exposing counterpart Sydney Hanson (with his DIY printing press). These authors are part of an ongoing research project I'd started as long ago as 2006, but ironically I found no willing outlets to publish anything, leading me to wonder half-heartedly whether there really was a conspiracy of silence around their findings. The present-day obscurity of their work forms a self-fulfilling prophecy about the suppression of knowledge (and opportunity), lending much unease, mystery, and squirms to outmanoeuvre "crank" vibes throughout the show.

If the aforementioned makes any sense at all, it should shed light on the many hindrances and impoverishments that have curtailed my activities of late (and others too, I note - the cost of living is crippling), hence lack of posts here lately.  Yet this in itself is interesting, and it's worthwhile to make a study of the factors at play, identifying solutions, etc., continuing the ongoing theme of 'thwarted histories' on this blog and elsewhere.

Working (or not) on a minus budget, and the imminent book of 'Organic Acoustic Modular Synthesisers'

Readers of this blog (if any) will be familiar with its theme of sound-making on a zero budget.  Electronic synthesisers are expensive... Conveniently, physical objects that can mechanically simulate synthesiser processes are not expensive - they're freely discoverable in urban/suburban environments.  Coming to terms with poverty guides all post-electronic music initiative, so it seems gratuitous when a post-electronic aesthetic is adopted by a well-off 'entrepreneur' (urgh), or basically anybody with employment.  Of course, I'm jealous, as I've been angling to earn a living or obtain funding from this idea - which I ascertained to be substantially original - since the dawn of the 21st century, yet others with non-zero budgets are surely better suited to doing stuff with swish electronic gubbins rather than adopting post-electronic contortions?  It seems unnecessary.  I always preface every post-electronic workshop with a warning that post-electronic systems go hand-in-hand with impoverishment, but it's surprising (and teeth-gritting) when some participants go on to later disprove this without me.

Back when I had a working camera and means to upload video, I used to get nice comments on my YouTube channel such as "This is great, may have to try something similar myself!" (that one was from 14 years ago).  More recently, the Oscillatorial Binnage post-electronic 'WokTones' performance video from last year attracted the comment "Amazing and inspiring work! I might pick up a technique or two for my own performances from this clip".  This sort of thing is quite encouraging, but it's rather galling if your meagre income is derived from this stuff; if people keep copying it (albeit divorcing it from the theory and melodrama that spawned it) it diminishes the chances of getting gigs.  This is all part of what I glibly call the Ghazala/Collins paradox: Reed Ghazala, a completely independent figure, pioneered circuit-bending's intuitive rewiring of electronics to produce strange new instruments, whereas Nicolas Collins is academically-rooted, with a methodical approach to hardware hacking, and whose instructional book 'Handmade Electronic Music', published by Routledge explodes the mystique surrounding circuit bending, rigorously surveys the collectives and artists working in this field (including Oscillatorial Binnage!), and heralded Collins' hardware hacking workshops around the world.  Both fascinating and well-established artists.  Apologies to both for this gross oversimplification of their work, but, theoretically, these could be viewed as two distinct approaches that cannot comfortably co-exist - Ghazala almost being a Davenport brother to Collins' J. N. Maskelyne (to use a Victorian magic analogy).  (Discuss[?]).

I never fully appreciated, until now, the possibility of a 'minus budget': a budget of debt.  In the last year or so it's become apparent that there comes a point of resourcelessness where productivity itself is scuppered.  I wrote an article for The Invisible Worker during the first lockdown last year when everyone seemingly went digital: "I was semi-prepared for a post-electronic situation, but completely unprepared for an ultra-electronic one".  The dreaded 'minus budget' eats far beyond a project's boundaries, ultimately jeopardising your living accommodation.  Minus budgets force the discarding of instruments and tools for want of space.

Recently I was forced to jettison many of my more cumbersome creations - over a decade's worth of electromagnetic or hand-cranked acoustic soundmakers once regularly trotted out for gigs or lectures.  With an inkling of their potential awkwardness, in 2005 I'd called these instruments "albatross machines" due to them being so difficult to transport.  Most of these hadn't even been documented properly due to my lack of up-to-date technology, and I relied on people filming my instruments on their phones during live demonstrations, naively assuming that that media would have some permanence (there's an important lesson there).  This reminded me of a poignant project by Imogen Heap and Leafcutter John...

In 2014 musicians Heap and Leafcutter launched a homemade instrument amnesty, requesting submissions of homemade "Musical Creatures" - semi-autonomous soundmaking constructions on the cusp of controllability - whose owners couldn't care for them any more: experiments "gathering dust, sitting on that shelf".  They cited my post-electronic instrument-building work "just to give you an idea of the kind of thing we're after", and provided a link to my blog.  Their project collected all kinds of these "creatures" to perform together.  If only the amnesty was ongoing, my creations would still be alive, AHGHHrg384uvgerjioel!!1

At the time, I wondered about the backstories of the devices that their project sought to rescue.  I couldn't imagine letting my own instruments fall into neglect.  Even my failed apparatuses were kept and tinkered with regularly.  Of course, I didn't reckon with the prospect of a minus budget.

My early stabs at post-electronics saw infusions of air and liquid, or rather syrup, footpumped into vortices between perforated membranes with adjustable tautness.  Wishing for less messy systems, I soon began crowbarring electromagnetism into post-electronic practice.  One abandoned instrument in this direction was too power-hungry to be classed as post-electronic: the electromagnetically levitated xylophone, inspired by the techniques of Eric Laithwaite, whose visionary book 'Propulsion without Wheels' I'd come across many years ago.  Ambitiously, xylophone keys would hover in the air, with theoretically near-infinite sustain.  The space-age ideal was, in practice, a shambolic hotchpotch, as the magnetic levitation field muffled the tones of the keys even when nodally aligned, and the buzz of the greedy coil drivers overwhelmed the xylophone tones.  Any refinements were beyond my budget, and besides, I sensed the instrument would be too gimmicky to offer anything exploratory.  But this led to lamppost resonation and, finally, a passively 'electric' post-electronic solution to completing a real-world analogy of the Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release envelope, so crucial to electronic music.

Anticipating the loss of these 'albatross' instruments in 2020, I decided to attempt a documentation of post-electronics' evolution, and a large body of text was rapidly accumulated which has been deemed publishable.  If all goes to plan, this will shortly be purchasable in book form.  The book 'Post-Electronics: The History, Design & Philosophy of Organic Acoustic Modular Synthesisers' memorialises many of the now-discarded instruments, or rather, modules, since the interconnectability of acoustic constructions is a key point.  But the main function of the book is to serve as a detailed guide to electronic-simulating acoustic soundmaking operations.  It also draws parallels with pre-electronics, giving an airing to the dynamics that condemned to obscurity the 19th century electro-musical innovator J. B. Schalkenbach (whose work I've surveyed, being custodian of the Johann Baptist Schalkenbach archive, yet bizarrely no publisher wants to touch), as well as countless old inventions that, undeveloped during their day, now become plausible as post-electronic music mechanisms in the wake of a widened musical consciousness that can reasonably accommodate them.

Parallel Worlds - Pre- and Post-Electronic Music Technology in Electronic Sound #68

To coincide with the release of Oscillatorial Binnage's album 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds', this month's Electronic Sound magazine (with Devo on the cover) contains my six-page article on pre-electronic soundmaking and its technological parallels with post-electronic music.  This blogpost provides some further perspectives.  A common thread linking pre- and post-electronic approaches is the acoustic manipulation of musical tone and rhythm, necessarily through physical mechanisms.  The study of pre-electronic music reveals parallel histories in electronic music... 'Parallel Worlds' is the title of the Electronic Sound feature.

It's rather historic to see neglected innovations of the past that I've long been excavating at last being assimilated into such a mainstream electronic music publication as Electronic Sound magazine: the electronic feedback instrument of Alfred Graham (which has no presence in electronic music history whatsoever, beyond my own publications), and Johann Baptist Schalkenbach's Orchestre Militaire Electro-Moteur are touched upon in the article (Schalkenbach's instrument gets a whole page to itself!).  The stories behind both are more thoroughly documented in my book 'Magnetic Music of the Spiritual World', for which I'm *still* seeking a proper publisher in the wake of my tiny self-published edition of 2015.  This project is, in fact, now expanded to encompass further examples of what I call 'failed histories' beyond the pre-electronic era... There's an enduring irony that failed histories seem to beget failure, inasmuch as they seem impervious to wider publisher interest - my project deemed by one outlet as "too eccentric".

Many of these hitherto undocumented histories were discovered through my activities on the fringes of the antiquarian book world.  Ephemera and self-published material is of particular interest - items seldom found catalogued anywhere else.  Such items represent lone voices calling out from the abyss.  At a second-hand bookshop, I once found a volume of acoustical patents, each with their original blue wrappers, and replete with fold-out diagrams, all bound into a hardcover for some unknown private library or collector some hundred years ago.  One particular patent in this book sheds some light on the 'failed history' dynamic...

In 1879, a patent was deposited by one Eugene Ernest Bornand for a rudimentary "musical instrument" called 'Le Vibrateur'.  This pre-electronic sound-effects device is briefly mentioned in the Electronic Sound article, as well as the Oscillatorial Binnage 'Agitations' CD booklet.  Le Vibrateur was designed by Bornand to alter the sound of a voice or a musical instrument.  The passage of sound through a flexible tube would cause two convex plates attached at the end to vibrate.

Eugene Ernest Bornand's 'Le Vibrateur'

Le Vibrateur was similar to the classic Punch and Judy 'swazzle' in that it distorted sound.  The obvious difference was that the swazzle - a reeded diaphragm - was inserted directly into the roof of the performer's mouth to create the buzzy voice, whilst Bornand's instrument had a tube enabling more varied uses.  The swazzle was considered a trade secret to Punch and Judy performers, yet boasted an international presence as widespread as the Punch tradition itself: in France the swazzle is called the sifflet–pratique, and in Italy the pivetta, etc.  It would've been considered perverse (in Punch and Judy circles) for some monopolist to attempt to patent the swazzle.  Despite the aforementioned differences, Bornand's Vibrateur is eyebrow-raisingly close to the swazzle, but Bornand widened the commercial scope of his innovation, encouraging a more practical use for it in fog signalling.  Bornand also saw the Vibrateur's potential in recreating orchestral sounds: "by varying the size, shape, and material used, I can produce imitations of every musical instrument, so that I can create the same effect as a full orchestra".  With post-electronic sound in mind, an aspect of interest for modern ears was Bornand's suggestion of new sonic possibilities - the Vibrateur player could adjust the buzz of the plates by pressing them together "causing the evolution of modified sound, weird, grotesque, or euphonious".

Little is known about the Vibrateur's patentee: a mysterious figure who declared his profession as "artist lyrique".  The term artiste lyrique was unusual in Victorian Britain, but was sometimes deployed as a pretence to elevate the art of the 'characteristic vocalist' into Frenchified bohemian realms (although it was generally reserved for female vocalists).  No trace of Eugene Ernest Bornand can be found in censuses, and his (or her, or their) patent appears to be communicated to the Patent Office directly, rather than through an international agent, making it likely the inventor was based in the UK.  There's a genealogical record of a Swiss national named Eugene Bornand arriving in Britain in August 1851, but there the trail goes cold.  It's possible that there was no such person as Eugene Ernest Bornand - it may be a pseudonym.  British performers often adopted more exotic-sounding names, and it wasn't unknown for patentees, especially music hall performers, to use nom-de-plumes, but there's no record of Eugene Bornand on the entertainment circuit either.

As part of the legal process, Bornand's patent had a witness signatory, a London-based "Wm. H. Le Troir" of 26 Budge Row.  This *was* a pseudonym (or could it be the printer's failed attempt to decipher an illegible signature?) - this was actually William Henry Le Fevre, a patent agent, engineer and president of The Balloon Society of Great Britain.

In the Vibrateur patent, Eugene Ernest Bornand gives his own address as "8 Howland Street" in Fitzrovia, London; a residential street in London's West End - a suitable dwelling for an artiste lyrique, in the entertainment district.  Howland Street was an interesting neighbourhood at this time...  At 7 Howland Street lived Adam Weiler, an activist cabinet-maker and friend of Karl Marx.  Meanwhile, 9 Howland Street hosted Swiss artist Frank Feller, lodging with older German painter Anthony Rosenbaum (painter of 'Chess Players', held by the National Portrait Gallery).  At 6 Howland Street lived the Pitman family who were all musicians going back for many generations, with the youngest daughter, 22-year-old Elizabeth Catherine Pitman being a teacher, and later, professor of music.  But who lived at 8 Howland Street?

Beyond what's stated in the Vibrateur patent, there's no record of a Eugene Bornand living at 8 Howland Street.  The 1881 census, however, does show one likely individual boarding there: a 22-year-old "vocalist" named Tom Ross.  Could this be the artiste lyrique, Eugene Bornand?  Stated as being born in Cheshire, Tom Ross is similarly elusive, with no further positive matches found in any genealogical databases.  Two of Tom Ross' fellow 8 Howland Street lodgers are in the same age bracket and likewise have theatrical professions - Charles Scott, also 22, was a "characteristic dancer" from Sheffield, and a John Preston: a 19-year-old "dress designer / milliner" from Devon.  These fellow travellers are also difficult to trace definitively.

Eugene Bornand's identity cannot yet be proven, but his sole patent, Le Vibrateur, is a significant example of a forgotten invention, overlooked or deemed unprofitable at the time, that may now be reappraised - in a manner only possible after the advent of electronic sound - through the lens of modernity, as a proto-effects-unit; an attempt to mechanically engage with musical tone, and a useful component for any post-electronic apparatus (indeed, Oscillatorial Binnage use similar methods on 'Agitations').

Whether or not Eugene Bornand was Tom Ross is a moot point.  The obliteration of both these identities from historical records illustrates the 'failed history' dynamic.  In the entertainment world, there's a tendency to pile pseudonym upon pseudonym, and when you factor in the constantly shifting whereabouts of a travelling performer, it makes cobbling together a biography of such an individual via official documents near-impossible.  Poverty was also a key factor: in a cautionary exposé of the perils of performer life, the 1885 edition of 'The Truth about the Stage' by the pseudonymous 'Corin'* warns prospective entertainers against "the meretricious glare of life behind the curtain," and its "halo of romance, which is rarely dispelled until the fatal step is taken and when it is too late to turn back".  (And maybe there's a lesson here for modern electronic and experimental performers... as I sense increasingly sharply through experience.)

* (Bizarrely, Corin - the author of 'The Truth about the Stage' (1885) was apparently the pseudonym of William Lynd, the great-grandfather of writer and The Wire contributor Clive Bell.)

Oscillatorial Binnage's 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds' is out now on Sub Rosa records.  Read more in this month's Electronic Sound #68.

Oscillatorial Binnage's new post-electronic music album: 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds'

Finally.  After countless struggles finding an outlet for this uncategorisable work, Oscillatorial Binnage's long-delayed album is out at last: 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds'.  It's on the Brussels-based Sub Rosa label - physical CD copies are accompanied by a colour illustrated booklet, 'A Primer on Post-Electronic Technique'.  The album is entirely post-electronic, arbitrarily microtonal music created using mechanical assemblies of found objects, resonated with electromagnetic force fields.  Distribution has been slowed by the pandemic, but it's available on Bandcamp (and also directly from me via the main Miraculous Agitations site).  Mirroring the current situation, the album envisions an apocalyptic paradigm shift scenario, necessitating adaptation in the face of adverse conditions (in this case, an imagined post-electronic situation: how might musicians create exploratory electronic music, with its emphasis on waveshaping, filters and modulation processes, without any synthesisers?  This album provides the answer).

Oscillatorial Binnage: (l to r) Chris Weaver, Fari Bradley, Dan Wilson, and Toby Clarkson.

Acoustic hacking workshop, 2009.

Oscillatorial Binnage is Fari Bradley, Chris Weaver, Toby Clarkson, and myself.  We've been performing together for fifteen years, during which time we've introduced many unusual new electroacoustic instruments, along with the concept of acoustic hacking.  'Agitations' features the electromagnetic resonators that I've been developing since 2004.  We've given many workshops around the world, teaching participants how to access the hidden frequencies of scrap objects using coils and force fields, and how, by acoustically combining workshoppers' apparatuses all together, even more complex sounds can be produced: communal apparatuses are fertile instruments for 'miraculous agitations'.

Miraculous agitations are instances of complex sonic progressions, usually emerging from clustered vibrating objects (see previous blogposts for more explanations).  Obtaining these emergent states requires patience, but the probability of such states occurring increases with the size of the apparatus.  In 2013, Oscillatorial Binnage spent a week at Maggie Thomas and Bob Drake's Borde Basse studio in the south of France, loaded up with as many salvaged/adapted objects as we could haul.  Over the course of our stay, we gradually coaxed elusive 'miraculous' states to emerge from our vibrating apparatuses, not without some grind (Bob, engineering the proceedings, notably had a box of headache tablets on standby).

Oscillatorial Binnage recording 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds'

Bob and Maggie's array of microphones captured many moments when our apparatuses would become locked into resonating grooves.  The album collects all these instances, recorded entirely acoustically without any electronic processing.  These moments - technically known as 'emergence' - are one of the principal advantages post-electronic apparatuses have over electronic synthesiser-based equivalents: the possibility of unexpected sonic events arising from an infinity of real-world physical variables.  Another benefit is the economical, recycling aspect: all soundmaking and filtering modules can be found for free.

We're grateful for the recent kind reviews of 'Agitations': "a panorama of hypnotic and metamorphic alterity"... "a sorely needed reminder of the miraculous in the mundane"... "bizarre titillating soundscapes" ... to quote a few.  The sonic alchemy was picked up on in Julian Cowley's review in last month's The Wire magazine: "an alchemical transmutation of the routine world".

      

Since live performances are unlikely under the present conditions, we hope to aerate some special material over the next few months.

'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds' is out now on Sub Rosa.

The supplementary booklet with the CD of Oscillatorial Binnage's 'Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds'

I Found a... Scale

Back in September 2018 I posted the "I Found a... Pipe" blogpost - an attempt to initiate a series of found object accounts; exploring the dynamics of curiosity, the chance encounters, the chains of association, the pratfalls and prat-uplifts that may accompany such discoveries.  One of the persistent themes of this blog is the idea that electronic-equivalents of soundmaking processes can be found for free in the physical world - an ideal driven by poverty and its resultant anti-capitalism, and accompanying scepticism towards commercial electronic hardware flavours-of-the-months.  Whereas the pipe of 2018 had limited soundmaking value, this new blogpost examines the musical scales obtainable from multi-holed hollow flints, found during pandemic walkabouts.

The current situation places bin-diving off-limits, so instead, I've been traipsing around fields.  The flint-rich geology of the locale boasts rocks with hollow cavities - channels left by decayed ancient sea sponges.  These hollow flints are difficult to spot, as their holes are usually clogged with mud.  After some cleaning with water and bell-wire, the cavities can be cleared, creating almost ocarina-like 'instruments'.  So far, a number of different flints have been found with interlinked channels, each offering unique microtonal musical scales.

These stones, each with their own in-built set of pitches formed 500 million years ago, are good grist for the arbitrary tuning mill.  Why is arbitrary tuning important?  I consider it a topic all-too-frequently dismissed.  For those who enjoy the divergent aspects of differently-tuned music, or wish to escape the ubiquity of the equal tempered musical scale, it may be surprising that microtonal/xenharmonic music offers very little refuge - it is here that just intonation and "pure" harmonic mathematical dogmatism supplants one tyranny with another.  I exaggerate here a bit, but it's fair to say that random/arbitrary musical scales are generally viewed as unsophisticated in microtonal music circles.

A few years ago I tried to establish a historical basis for 'intuitively selected tuning systems' in my Radionics Radio project (on Sub Rosa records), but drawing upon a fringe science - no matter how artistically groundbreaking those acoustic-radionic activities were in the late 1940s - didn't convince many (radionics involves 'psychically' selecting frequencies that correspond to thoughts).  Random tunings offer complete freedom, and reveal the idiosyncrasies of the instruments used, as well as the identities of soundmakers.  I would go as far to politicise it: arbitrary tuning is perhaps the ultimate musical 'decolonisation' whilst also being a practical and philosophical ideal for microtonal music's LGBTQ+ lineage that embraces such varied personalities as Kathleen Schlesinger, Elsie Hamilton, to Harry Partch and Wendy Carlos - a lineage rarely-discussed, but deeply rooted, I believe, in the opposition to the norms of western equal temperament (and the contra-norms of just intonation and equal divisions of the octave).

The hollow flint... containing a scale.

Hollow flints found in fields speak of the primacy of arbitrary tunings: random, fully individuated tunings literally set in stone.  My favourite is a handheld flint with five channels.  Unlike the specially-lipped ocarina, hollow flints cannot produce pure tones when blown into, unless a sharp 'labium tip' is expertly chiselled into it somehow (a feature of all fipple flutes).  This isn't necessarily a problem - for instance, sound artist Akio Suzuki has been playing upon unrefined natural stones for decades, eliciting exploratory pitched noise: half-tonal, half-percussive, and sensitively done.  Covering the holes on the flint while blowing does produce vague pitches, but too broad to measure precisely.

Kathleen Schlesinger, in her 1939 deep-study of ancient greek auloi (reeded wind instruments dug up from historical sites) and their possible scales remarked that "it is impossible to determine the pitch, scale, or modality of any pipe that lacks a mouthpiece which will play it".  These rocks are not instruments, and it is indeed tricky treating them as such: even if a fipple mouthpiece (from a wind recorder, for instance) is introduced to the rock (which I did), the pitch of the notes varies due to its player's breath pressure: the more open holes there are, the more breath pressure is required to produce a tone - and the natural reflex action is to supply more breath pressure, an action so unconscious that it almost feels as if the rock becomes an extension of the body.  Try it yourself.

It is possible to connect a small lapel microphone to a loudspeaker amplifier, and place the microphone inside the flint to hear feedback.  The feedback pitch is relative to the cavity, and alters according to the fingering of the cavities.  I did a brief experiment with this on camera, and posted it to Facebook to advertise the upcoming episode of Wavelength on Resonance FM where I describe these experiments.

On the internet, there's always either a miserable don't-know-who, or a know-it-all nonsenseclown poised to blurt.  If they're remotely connected to creative doings, it tends to spur on the mission to legitimise arbitrary scales.  On this occasion, one such character (I can't discern which) emerged from the woodwork to advertise their obliviousness to these experiments' contexts: "eh, this is like sticking a piezo transducer in anything. Ok; weird, somewhat regulated noise. 'Man farting in field' has been Lucier'd to death."

Alfred Graham's feedback flute, 1894.

Maybe this person is rightfully irate to some extent: the volume required to obtain the pitches of the flint cavity is horrendous on the ear.  To record it, one rainy afternoon I walked to the field where the flint originated, specifically to avoid remonstrations.  Alvin Lucier used compressors to limit the volume of his object-based feedback.  This feedback technique actually pre-dates Lucier's work by eight decades - the feedback flute was proposed by Alfred Graham, patented in 1894 - a failed history I've excavated and written about in 'Magnetic Music...' and 'Failed Histories of Electronic Music', and recreated as a working model.  Graham recognised the many variables affecting the flute's pitch, such as battery power, the shape and construct of the loudspeaker and microphone, and their relative positions.  Nevertheless, the feedback flint, if held stable enough, is a fairly accurate approximation of the pitch intervals obtainable.  By comparing the feedback-generated intervals with the intervals obtained with an attached fipple, and also with the vague windy tones created when blowing, mean averages can be obtained.

With the lowest note registering as 669Hz, the ratios are calculable as 1/1, 737/669, 775/669, 263/223, 269/223 and 828/669 (giving an ascending 167.590, 254.628, 285.622, 324.674, 369.149 in cents).

What can be done with these notes?  Well, the scale of this handheld flint encompasses less than four semitones (3.69, to be exact), which is a restrictive set of notes, but frequent exposure to the notes acclimatises the ear to soundmaking/melodic possibilities.  This is something noted by the composer Susan Alexjander who derived scales from DNA bases.  DNA bases' tunings might as well be arbitrary, such is the inharmonic chaos - they seemed "so strange and alien that one at first despairs of ever creating a beautiful work of art, or making any coherent 'sense' out of them", according to Alexjander.  By constant exposure to the new scales "played over and over on the synthesiser, some arrestingly beautiful combinations began to appear"...  so when dealing with such disorientating scales, perseverance is key!

More can be heard on Wavelength, broadcast on Resonance 104.4FM on 19th June 2020. "A programme of multiple agendas presented by William English. This week: a tape sync with Oscillatorial Binnage member Daniel Wilson who, prevented from bin-diving during the Covid-19 epidemic, instead turns to "ground-diving" to dig out unusual stones from the earth. The potential for producing 'rock music' is showcased after a lengthy preliminary chat with William on the current state of the second-hand book trade."