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'

Wireless on the Brain in 1922 (with Ernie Mayne) - Radio versus the Music-Hall

Within the expanse of the electromagnetic spectrum is a small band of colour - the human visible light range.  This narrow strip could be viewed as a sort of firewall: above the visible light range lurks dangerous ionising radiations that can mutate organic matter, and below it are the more benign non-ionising radiations facilitating our radio communications amidst thronging natural atmospherics, from the low Schumann resonances of the earth's magnetic field, to the fizz of the sun.

Many radio waves are of natural origin, but since the development of radio technology the possible biological and environmental effects of lower-range non-ionising electromagnetic radio waves have been a source of enduring speculation.  There's still much research to be done to establish the safety of the upper microwave range occupied by radar signals.  5G signals will operate near this range, and the ongoing debates surrounding 5G have reminded me of a song written in 1922 and recorded around 1923, called 'Wireless on the Brain', thus:


Now I'm in my 30s, and my unemployability seems to be fairly well-cemented (at least locally, where I live), I can do things that, when younger, I would've been too shy to do for fear of ridicule.  During the current lockdown I've been exercising, but my belief is that exercise of the voice must accompany that of the body.  So I modulate song onto my breathing.  I run, hop, backtrack, vocalise randomness, gallop sideways, and indulge in all kinds of physical whims, especially around industrial estates, in what I call 'undisciplined exercise'.  If anyone sees me or tells me to vacate the area, I carry on regardless - I simply don't care anymore.  Yesterday I saw some telecom engineers in the distance, which compelled me to start singing 'Wireless on the Brain' (as sung by music-hall comic Ernie Mayne), whilst sprinting sideways, in a circular dance, to the rhythm.  Please, reader, do not think that I'm trivialising a serious matter - I'm just drawing attention to a contested area of thought.  Rather than letting this recalled song nugget go to waste, I thought a blog post on it might be worthwhile.

I can't remember where I first heard 'Wireless on the Brain'.  It may have been taped off the radio.  It appears to be a rare song that hasn't received much attention.  "My wife Jane's got wireless on the brain" runs the chorus - and while it does have some now-un-PC passages that would've been innocent within 1920s vernacular, a malign swipe endures in its cocking-a-snook at Marconi's wireless technology.  Variety performers' livelihoods depended on people going out to music-halls, and so the prospect of audiences staying at home listening to wireless radios was a concern.  Ernie Mayne, aka 'The Simple One', was an effective 'everyman' character to give voice to this wireless cynicism.  (In the vaudeville tradition, Ernie also had an 'everywoman' alter-ego as a vehicle for other songs such as the wartime 'Tale of My Husband's Shirt').

'Wireless on the Brain' isn't actually about the biological effects of radio.  Having something 'on the brain' is likely an early Americanism, noted in Samuel Fallows 1835 'Progressive Dictionary of the English Language' as low slang denoting "an inordinate feeling or desire regarding anything".  Nevertheless, for 1922, 'Wireless on the Brain' is a strikingly visceral title.  The main concern in 'Wireless on the Brain' is that the protagonist husband's wife is too engrossed in listening to the radio to cook his food for him.  A rather antiquated situation.

The title of 'Wireless on the Brain' harks back to another song sung by Ernie Mayne a few years earlier during WWI, 'Farmyard on the Brain'.  Here again, his wife is the affected subject who's working on a farm, and has gone "farmyard barmy" (some extramusical animal imitations underscore this).  Sexist undertones are softened somewhat by the fact that the joke is really on Ernie Mayne, who becomes reduced to a subservient animal state: "if I want a bit of mutton for my supper now, I have to say 'baa baa'".  I can't tell whether the lyrics are all double-entendres - if they are, it conjures deeply unappetising images.  Returning to 'Wireless on the Brain' though... towards the end of the song Ernie is similarly enfeebled, "I tremble like a mouse... for everything is wireless in our house".  Food, incidentally, was a recurring theme for twenty-stone Mayne, whose other hits included 'My Meatless Day', 'There's No Toad in the Toad-in-the-Hole' (both addressing wartime rationing), and 'I've Never Wronged an Onion, Why Should it Make Me Cry?'.

The wife 'Jane' with 'wireless on the brain' hints at a historically obscured female radio listenership, habitually accessing a world of information beyond domestic confines and home literature of the day.  Ernie Mayne's wife wasn't called Jane in real life - she was in fact a performer too, adopting the stagename Alice Davidson (aka Alice Emma Holbrow).  'Wireless on the Brain' was written by one of Ernie's collaborators: a London songwriter called John Patrick Harrington whose wife was named Jane - Jane Eliza Harrington, from Birmingham.  Whether or not the song is a portrayal of their domestic happenings is not known, but happily, Harrington later wrote a gushing poem for his wife on their golden wedding anniversary in 1937.

'Video killed the radio star' sang The Buggles in 1979, but in 1922, radio was threatening to kill the music-hall star.  At the age of 58, Harrington was a veteran music-hall writer, and 'Wireless on the Brain' could be seen as a late jibe at the technology that endangered the livelihoods of those struggling to branch out and adapt their established craft to a brand new medium.  With the ongoing debate over 5G, it's worth considering the positions of those extolling its pros and its cons; the cultural tectonics at play.  Like music-hall songwriting in the 1920s, 5G looms over those whose knowledge bases are rooted in older systems.  Wherever there are livelihoods at stake, arguments often throw up unflattering imagery concerning the contested article.  On the other hand, the heavy investments surrounding 5G prompt counterarguments supporting the new wireless technology, yet the proposed wireless ranges are admitted to have a lack of test studies to back up these reassurances.  Video may have killed the radio star, but will radio itself return to kill everyone?  The public are caught between these arguments.  In the meantime, I will continue galloping in circles around industrial estates singing refrains from 'Wireless on the Brain'.

If I ever meet that son of a gun who first invented wireless
I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll have his bally gore.
At listening-in my dear old Dutch is absolutely tireless
And when I want to fall asleep and snore
She went and bought a wireless set, and "what a wreck," I feel;
We have a blooming opera now with every blinkin' meal.

My wife Jane, she's got wireless on the brain;
While she's taking messages I send S.O.S.-ages,
Even in my bye-bye, she cries "you lazy T*rk!"
"Can't you hear the wireless? It's time you started work!'

She gabbles about her wireless ways, her aerials and broadcasting.
No error: a terror, my old girl's going to be,
And when I sit down at breakfast time, I've had to sit there fasting
'Cos she, all smiles, is listening-in, you see.
She says "Lloyd George is speaking now,"
Then I shout good and strong:
"'Ere, ain't it nearly time some wireless kippers came along?"

[Chorus]

I jolly well wish that missis of mine had never met Marconi,
I'm worried, I'm flurried, I tremble like a mouse.
I'm pretty well near off my filbert, and I'm not so far from stoney,
For everything is wireless in our house.
Our wireless dog keeps barking outside on his wireless chain,
And upstairs in the attic they've had wireless twins again.

[Chorus]

My wife Jane she's got wireless on the brain
While she's taking messages, I send S.O.S.-ages
Even in my bye-bye, she's shouting out, "Police!"
"Who's upset the turkey? He's mopping up the grease."

Organised Sound 22 - August 2017 - What are Failed Histories?

My situation is becoming unbearable.  Faced with closed doors everywhere, the bleakness is gut-wrenching (and it's amazing how far guts can be wrenched).  Everywhere, it seems, dilettantes are ascending to lofty positions whilst the hardest working researchers rot: poor, unacknowledged and girlfriendless/boyfriendless.  This may sound bitter, but you'd be bitter too if lacerated by the implicit insults within hundreds of job rejections (e.g. employers that state they're "committed to hiring only excellent people" [which is always untrue] - not to mention the humiliation of rebuffal from unpaid thrift store volunteering), and subsequent regular intimidation from police for bin-diving and electroacoustic busking.  Why is this happening?  Do I have some sort of character flaw?  My parents assure me "no" as I wail in despair covered in filth, but these struggles certainly imply so...  it all points toward a character mismatch between recruiter/recruit - or 'mismatched impedance' as Daphne Oram analogised defective society/individual interfacing (a composer who herself found recognition to be elusive - her work becoming more widely known only after she died in 2003).

Organised Sound Vol. 22 No. 2 contains my lengthy paper titled 'Failed Histories of Electronic Music' outlining the mechanics of failure (vividly, I hope) via the 'failed history' concept that foregrounds the dynamics between culture and the individual 'agents' within it.  Having experienced successive failures, I'd like to think it carries much weight.  In an Oramesque spirit, I've provided an analogy in the form of 'failed subharmonics' - spikes of activity that are never re-referred to or 'recontacted' within the historical continua ever again.  I present (or jumpstart) the stories of three 'failed histories' - hitherto unexplored never-discussed electronic music precedents absent from all its textbooks - drawn from my own intensive research with hard-won primary source material: 1) "Electric musician" Johann Baptist Schalkenbach, 2) John Gray McKendrick's first electronic sound demonstration in 1895, and 3) radio oscillation in the 1920s.  The latter vignette actually came about through the discovery of rare early radio ephemera found whilst bin-diving.  Certain neglected aspects of Futurism also haunt the paper.  Regular readers of this blog may recall that in 2015 I tried to self-publish writings related to all this in the light of zero publisher interest (it seems failed histories beget failure).

Post-electronic soundmaking apparatus

The idea of failed subharmonics emerged from apparatus-building work in my long-running post-electronics / miraculous agitation-seeking musical project (which, coincidentally, is briefly referenced by another author elsewhere in the same issue).  The presence of subharmonics within motion-inhibiting vibrating physical systems has been demonstrated by José A. Sotorrio.  My own research and soundmaking has revealed failed subharmonics are also plentiful.  Failed subharmonics constitute blips within a tonal continua that didn't fulfil their 'bounce' potential to reconcile themselves as periodic undertones.  Pitchless components of vocal fry are an example of this.  I knew that another author had used the term "failed subharmonics" somewhere before - but it was unGoogleable.  Googling "failed subharmonics" (or hyphenated "failed sub-harmonics") yielded only my own writings.  Eventually, among my cupboards I rediscovered its origin: "failed subharmonics" were first suggested - only very fleetingly - in a 1991 paper by Robert Schumacher as a possible explanation for the non-periodic sonic 'grit' within acoustic sounds.  Schumacher's paper, in Pixel magazine, is not currently on any search engines (web or academic) - a reminder that a whole world exists outside Google and its ilk!

Failed subharmonics represented as 'unfulfilled bounces' in a vibrating system

'Failed Histories of Electronic Music' contains some 'reveals' necessarily compressed into single sentences or less.  For example, in the course of the paper, the true identity of Maskelyne and Cooke's Egyptian Hall in-house musician (and composer) "Charles Mellon" is - for the first time ever - revealed to be Lawrence John Holder.  Tracking him down was no mean feat.  I have charted his life story in an another unpublished paper, but no paying outlet seems forthcoming (is it too much to ask for recompense for the travel and archive-diggings?)  Nobody seems to care.

The Delaware Road

As a further example of 'ignored output phenomena', elsewhere, today's Guardian Guide carries a preview of this Friday's Delaware Road concert at the Kelvedon Hatch nuclear bunker, yet there's no mention of my Radionics Radio contribution which involves *electroacoustic music made with radionic thought-frequencies* and will feature never-before-heard excerpts from restored Delawarr Laboratories' tapes!  These are unprecedentedly novel and bold new territories with great philosophical implications, surely?  "Can thoughts be embedded in musical tunings?"  Why the neglect?  Evidently there's some mechanism of resonance inherent in culture which propagates some ideas/works/figures and ignores others, as if they're impervious to uptake (as with failed subharmonics).  Putting aside my own injured ego, the blurb also fails to mention that Delaware Road is in fact part of a monumental immersive theatre production (on a scale seemingly approaching that depicted in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York) in which all the acts are building blocks - its entirety devised and storyboarded by Alan Gubby.  Anyways...

My proposed paper for the Journal of Sonic Studies titled 'Post-Electronic Music: Sound, Materiality and Electromagnetic Force Fields' - on the development and implications of electromagnetic force field resonation - has, bizarrely, been rejected.  Ditto my paper on the first ever electronic sequencer employed by Hugo Gernsback at New York's WRNY in 1925.  My freshly unearthed discoveries and original researches seem to not culturally adhere - despite me working hard and making as much noise as I can about them...

Aside from being deeply frustrating, those aforementioned culture-interfacing snarl-ups are first-hand evidence that 'failed histories' are in the making right now.  A good friend and cyber-contact of mine committed suicide in 2010 - a hugely talented poet and electronic musician - yet this person seems entirely forgotten.  Ironically, it feels improper to invoke this person's name here in what's superficially my own ranty cheap-shot at power structures within culture.  Ergo, if the current trend is to valourise unrecognised musicians and thinkers of the past, we should also remember that - in the present day - by merely neglecting to iterate and reiterate, each of us (including me) partakes in the 'make-or-break' mechanism that's still producing failed histories - more so than ever.  We are all filters.  Consider the world of contemporary electronic music outside the narrow confines of institutions: a lively landscape populated by inmates of airtight niches, savants rapt by idées fixes, bedsit tinkerers locked in inner battles with their own recalcitrance, goa-psytrance consciousness-escapees and ganja experimentalists living-for-the-moment: characters resistant (or invisible) to the academicised platforms of electronic music.  It would seem that the potential for failed histories is more prevalent in experimental music than anywhere else.  Consider also the ubiquity of certain music theorists du jour (almost always men) who hog positions that could be filled by seven or eight other theorists all keen for their own outlets to publish, talk or perform; outlets eclipsed by a gravity - a monopolised field of resonance - surrounding one figure.  No doubt future researchers will be spoilt for choice for unchampioned quarry when they start burrowing through the 21st century's data heap.

Maybe if one's activities can be adapted to adhere to the present cultural continua, the activities may find resonance (which is easier said than done) and avoid the fate of a future 'failed history'.  To return to the physical analogy - in post-electronic apparatuses, by making slight mechanical adjustments between parts, instances of failed subharmonics can be turned into steady subharmonics happily riding along the train of tone.  It's gratifying that 'Failed Histories of Electronic Music' was published in Organised Sound in a topically relevant issue (and filled with other excellent papers on the subject of 'Alternative Histories of Electroacoustic Music'), and it even forms the first paper in the issue - I thank the editors for including it.  Alternative histories are always more fascinating than the 'established' histories...  but that's of little comfort to the unrecognised, wheezing players behind those alternative histories, who would've undoubtedly much preferred at least some nods toward gainful employment while they were alive.

'Failed Histories of Electronic Music' is in Organised Sound 22, issue 2, August 2017.

Oscillatorial Binnage @ IKLECTIK - Tuesday 13th June 2017 - Post-Electronic Improvisation & New Electromagnetic Instruments

Rustlings at the horizon: an Oscillatorial Binnage rehearsal

For those who may have forgotten, Oscillatorial Binnage is a London-based experimental improvisation group containing Fari Bradley, Toby Clarkson, Chris Weaver and Daniel Wilson (this blog's humble author).  We employ a wide range of soundmaking techniques, from room feedback tones to stick-zithers; from touch contact cutlery to electromagnetic eavesdropping upon digital cameras.  Recently, FACT Magazine described us as creating "abstract noise from found objects and metal attacked with electromagnetic force-fields".   Indeed, this is our current modus operandi - it forms the basis of our long-awaited 'Oscillations: Post-Electronic Music' LP recorded in France a few years ago, employing the 'post-electronic' acoustic synthesis technique which we began to experimentalise in 2005, and which I pursue tirelessly here on this blog and wherever else I'm permitted to aerate.  In Oscillatorial Binnage, our individual explorations upon these instruments coalesce into living, breathing dronescapes from which rhythms and harmonies resound whenever the much-sought emergent states are achieved.

For more than a year, half of Oscillatorial Binnage (that is, Chris Weaver and Fari Bradley) have been engaged in an extended residency in the United Arab Emirates (where they have lectured, performed, released their 'Systems for a Score' LP, and built installations).   Their absence had muted Oscillatorial Binnage operations somewhat.  In the interim, Binnage member Toby Clarkson produced his feature length documentary 'Little Tsunamis', and I released an album that attempted to embody thoughts within tuning systems.   At long last - this month Oscillatorial Binnage are back together once again. A new gig this Tuesday June 13th at the Ikectik Art Lab - our first for a long time - promises to herald the upcoming release of the 'Oscillations: Post-Electronic Music' LP on Ash International later this year.  Our rehearsals have brought to light paradigm-shifting new sounds occupying realms between noise and tone; midway between percussion and harmony.  All puffery aside, the 13th promises to be an exquisite evening.

Oscillatorial Binnage's Chris Weaver coaxing emergent tones from electromagnetic gubbins

This event is the second in Resonance Extra's Extra Nights live broadcast series at Iklectik (the first of which was Milo T-M's groundbreaking 'Myrmomancy Music' last month [for which I was honoured to build viewing cases for; boxes within which live ants roamed]).  Dauntingly (for us), our upcoming Oscillatorial Binnage meditation/exposition at Extra Nights #2 will be shoulder-to-shoulder with greatness: it boasts the wonderful Lepke B. with his idiosyncratic sonic gobsmackingness, whilst the bill is helmed by US maestro and hardware hacking proselytiser Prof. Nic Collins, who gives a rare performance here in the UK.  Incidentally, a 'post-electronic thumb piano' - as used in Oscillatorial Binnage - is featured in Collins' landmark tome 'Handmade Electronic Music'.  Collins himself is no stranger to electromagnetic actuation - his backwards electric guitar virtually established the practice.  His performances are always engaging, instructive and entertaining.  So come see these wonders at Iklectik this Tuesday 13th June : Iklectik, 20 Carlisle Lane, London SE1.

Post-Electronic Music and Electromagnetic Force Fields at Hackoustic 2016

Yesterday I had the unexpected honour of giving the first presentation at the first ever Hackoustic Festival at the Machines Room, Hackney.  Prestigious as it sounds, this scheduling was a rather a chance outcome of other performers dropping out at the last-minute.  Nevertheless, it was a privilege to present an overview of my work there and it seemed to resonate perfectly with the Hackoustic theme.  I spoke about post-electronic music - something I've been steeped in since an epiphanic acoustic experience on a train in 2004.  Post-electronic music has its pros and cons: miraculous agitations are possible (that is, emergent sonic effects), but the instrumentation is often cumbersome and difficult to transport.  Inspiringly, some other Hackoustic performers had collapsible instruments: a very useful feature indeed, and something that should always be factored into apparatus-building at the planning stage (but which is easier said than done when working with found objects).

My presentation was prefaced with a preamble on the value of electromagnetic feedback force-fields in the resonating of objects.  Through the use of electromagnetic relay coils (akin to large EBows), it is possible to establish the elusive element of sustain in the Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release post-electronic system.  Attack, decay and release are all qualities achievable physically, but the sustain parameter - achievable with electromagnetism - completes the electronic / acoustic envelope control analogy.  Crucially, it allows physical waveshaping operations to be performed.  The summation of many years of these electromagnetic post-electronic experiments can be heard on the upcoming Oscillatorial Binnage album Oscillations: Post-Electronic Music (which should finally be released this year), featuring myself, Fari Bradley, Toby Clarkson and Chris Weaver performing on post-electronic electromagnetic assemblies (which actually tended to couple acoustically through the table to become a single super-instrument).

A multi-player instrument from our Oscillatorial Binnage post-electronic recordings

Somebody asked where further information on post-electronic music can be found, so the main purpose of this blogpost is to provide links to these two newly-uploaded papers: 'Miraculous Agitations: On the Uses of Chaotic, Non-Linear and Emergent Behaviour in Acoustic Vibrating Physical Systems' and the shorter 'Dumpster Diving and Post-Electronic Soundmaking' (originally published in the 2012 and 2014 Leonardo Music Journal respectively).  The former may serve as a primer or manifesto on the technique.  Both were written at a time when access to workbenches came easily - alas, it is all too easy to take such spaces for granted, as I'm currently in more cramped conditions.  Space is the major issue in the construction and recording of physical instruments.  Most of the aforementioned Oscillatorial Binnage album material was recorded at the wonderful Borde Basse studio in Southern France where we were spoilt for choice with vastnesses of space (hauling the stuff there was our necessary endurance for this luxury).  And so spaces such as the Music Hackspace (to which the Hackoustic Festival is attached) and its satellite workshops must be cherished.  Such spaces are the stronghold for acoustic experimentation in a digital world...

Post-electronic preparations at Hackoustic 2016

Clickety-Click update : Plagiarism in the Music-Hall

H.F. Juleene (aka John Parsons)

Of late I've been delving deeper into the overseas exploits of H. F. Juleene and Dot D'Alcorn with their Mephisto electro-musical entertainment.  As stated previously, their Mephisto act was stolen from that of J. B. Schalkenbach, but they toured overseas in places Schalkenbach hadn't set foot.  To its credit, Mephisto attained some originality from Dot D'Alcorn's role as Mephisto's operator; she was described (by Juleene himself) as "the only lady electrician in terrestrial orbit".

Earlier this month The Wire's website hosted a rendition of Juleene's Clickety-Click, performed by Fari Bradley, featuring an electrical clicker built by myself.  The song was published in score form around 1887, and is highly likely to be scored for Mephisto, with the clicks played on an electrical adjunct.

I've made a recent discovery that adds a new dimension to Clickety-Click and demolishes its claims to (musical) originality...

In 1887, Mephisto was touring around the US, playing in Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.  Incidentally, some curious things happened on this tour - at the Lyceum Theatre in Chicago, June 10th 1887, Mephisto's bare wires were rigged onto chairs to electrically shock the audience at key points during the act.  An old man suffered an injury and sued both Juleene and the management.  Juleene and D'Alcorn saw the potential for publicity in this, and sought to contrive another incident of this sort, which they did later that year at the Brooklyn Theatre by consorting with the management to publicise another - fake - lawsuit.

Compared to other acts of the time Mephisto was a novelty, but it remained a rip-off to a gobsmacking extent: Juleene piled audacity upon audacity.  The new discovery concerning Clickety-Click reveals yet more audaciousness.  Whilst in Philadelphia, Juleene was evidently exposed to a very similar song called Clickety-Click March (c.1881) by Fred T. Baker.  Baker's version also featured the "clickety-clicks" written beneath the score, but the piece did not emerge from any electro-musical context.  Juleene appears to have retranscribed it, slightly altered some parts, and stamped his name onto it when it was published as Clickety-Click in The Musical Million (a weekly periodical published by Dot D'Alcorn's father, Henri D'Alcorn), presumably safe in the knowledge that no UK readers would recognise the melody.  Evidence still suggests that the so-called "electrofanatic" Juleene intended the clicks to be played electrically, but this episode highlights the smoke-and-mirrors nature of the music hall - where all is not what it seems, and everything is touched by piracy.

Plagiarism and priority disputes are still a concern today.  This is especially so in electroacoustic music where compositions are characterised less by 'songcraft' and more by basic 'active principles': harnessing natural phenomena where compositions are goaded to emerge almost automatically with minimal composerly intervention.  Such 'active principles' are so elemental that today's electroacoustic composers often clash over things as simple as amplified beetles on tin foil.  Recently, Prof. Nic Collins visited London from Chicago, and as we conversed on this topic in the King's Arms pub, he gave his own perspective.  Many of his students, he said, often proffer ideas that appear to hold new promise, only be told that "Alvin Lucier did that thirty years ago".  Lucier was Collins' former teacher and was composing experimental music throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s that rigorously employed natural acoustic principles.  Indeed, Lucier has perhaps explored all the most elemental 'active principles' for principle-driven electroacoustic musical compositions.  But anyways... More on this anon.... There's no need to be defeatist about the paucity of unexplored 'active principles', as the principles are incredibly variable depending on circumstances and environmental factors, and there is much variety still to be had from things as elemental as, say, feedback... and clicking...

Clickety-Click - The earliest surviving electrical musical score?

The Wire's website now hosts a short recreation of what is believed to be one of the earliest surviving scores for an electrical instrument.  It is called Clickety-Click and is written by H. F. Juleene (aka John Parsons) - one half of the Victorian electro-musical act Mephisto, starring Dot D'Alcorn: "The Only Lady Electrician in the World".  The piece was published circa 1887.

For the recreation, I built a basic electrical-tapper and foot-switch combo, and Fari Bradley played the piece on Resonance FM's upright piano.  But it should be said that there's no explicit indication that the scored 'click-e-ty-clicks' were specifically intended for an electric adjunct.  However, the evidence strongly suggests it was intended for Mephisto.  (The publication in which it appears - The Musical Million - also published Juleene's The Mephisto Gavotte [referred to in a previous post]).

Clickety-Click isn't entirely representative of the electro-musical style.  One imagines that the scoring of its 'electrical' parts suffers from the constraints of traditional notation, and even the melody itself is wrung through the wringer of The Musical Million's popular stylings.  If we examine the score carefully, the actual sound 'click-e-ty-click' savours of an electric button - connected to an electromagnetic percussor - being pushed twice.  The two 'click-...-ty-...' sounds, synchronised with the first and last beats of the beamed three-quaver chords represent the 'on' state: the leading edge of the trigger, whilst the '...-e-...-click' sounds represent the automatic recoil in the 'off' state.

An actual description of the Mephisto entertainment illuminates the extent to which electricity was employed.  (The thematic and technical aspects of Mephisto were based heavily on J.B. Schalkenbach's electro-musical act):

"Bounding about amid flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, she [Dot D'Alcorn] explains how she means to electrify mankind by her magic powers, and how by the mere touch of her fingers on the keys of the organ storms shall rage, cannons roar, birds warble, churches come into view, ships sail, and railway engines their 'daily course of duty' run.  Presently, sitting down at the instrument, the young lady commences a series of operatic airs, sometimes 'pianisimo' and at other times 'organic'.  But the wonder is that as the music proceeds strange effects are produced.  A canary trills forth its accompaniment, a cuckoo calls, drums hidden away somewhere take up the oracle, and dazzling light flashes out for a moment among the audience and is gone before the people can turn round to see 'what's up'.  Castanets suspended in the air keep time to the melody, and an arrangement of cups and saucers half-way down the hall respond to the musical strains.  A cannon suddenly goes off in the gallery, and before the surprise it has evoked disappears the audience notice a miniature church in one corner suddenly lighted up.  Then, with a whistle and a snort, the circular railway sets in motion; a ship above the stage is seen buffeting with the waves, and a lighthouse throws its lurid rays around.  Vivid lights appear in various places, and as suddenly vanish; flashes of lightning cross the hall, a salvo of artillery is given, the rushing sound of a pelting storm can be heard, and, amid a crash, and peal, and flash of fire, 'Mephisto' disappears."

Dot D'Alcorn aka Susette D'Alcorn in pre-Mephisto days (circa 1883) dressed as 'Gentleman John' - a song that cocks a snook at young men-about-town of wealthy parentage.

More on this can be found in the current issue of The Wire #364...  Click to Clickety-Click to hear the recreation.

Entangled Histories: Digging out Electronic Music's Roots (or, what's electronic, and what's not)

Acoustic Futurist noise-intoner,
London, 1914

With the centenary of the Italian Futurist's first UK performance of the Art of Noises fast approaching, various rustlings are underway to commemorate the occasion.  There are stirrings at Resonance 104.4FM: the expert engineer and sound designer Peter McKerrow is now working on some Futurist acoustic noise-intoners for an upcoming happening - the specifics still under wraps - but these replicas promise to boast some novel visual quirks that will see the 100-year-old acoustic noise-makers (that one reviewer in 1914 described as "sausage machines") brought "BANG" up to date (to use a Futurist noise effect).  For this project I researched the original noise-intoner (intonarumori) patent to assist the construction, and also set myself a challenge of building a prototype entirely from found materials.

In my own rather slapdash attempt (built inside a "red telephone box" CD holder) I took the liberty of dispensing with the soundmaking handle.   The pitch lever (an arm from a hydraulic door closer) remains in place, but the actual handle to produce sound is removed.  Giving into temptation, I decided to replace it with a resonating coil system to electromagnetically resonate the metal string (as an eBow does) - bringing the noise-intoners a big step closer to the proverbial 'mechanical synthesiser.'  My skew-whiff prototype has thus taken a big departure from the original, and now begins to resemble a post-electronic miraculous agitation apparatus...

Electromagneticised noise-intoner - built from found materials

But here I should skid to a halt.  Tony Herrington recently wrote a great piece on The Wire website - "Turn that Noise down!" - drawing attention to the clumsiness of an excitable electronic music collective that has misrepresented Luigi Russolo's Art of Noises as being the birth of electronic music(!).  Woefully, perspectives on Futurist music have been skewed by modern popular accounts erroneously lumping the Futurists in with early electronic developments.   The Futurists did play some "electric" noise-intoners, *but* these only featured electric beaters to strike the strings - the soundstuff itself was purely mechanical, and bore no relation to any electronic instruments.  Regarding my own electromagnetic rebuilding of a noise-intoner with electromagnetic resonators, I must stress that I am bastardising the original!

Noise-intoner patent

Let's take this opportunity to look at a forgotten pre-history of electronic music, that is, electronic music in its proper definition: electronically produced tone...  As Herrington says, truly, the Futurists are not implicated with the history of electronic music - the history rather circumnavigates around them, tacitly acknowledging, but shy of their presence.  So let's leave the Futurists behind and examine the true beginnings of electronic music...

The principles of electronic music were established in the early 19th century, but electric loudspeakers were not perfected until the early 20th century, so the early quiet experiments did not lend themselves to grand performance - remaining confined to the laboratory.  It was the perfection of the electric loudspeaker that gave electronic music its "mouth" so to speak: giving the electrons a means to sing.  In Britain, the earliest loudspeaker-derived electronic sounds were being dabbled with by the now overlooked electrical engineer Alfred Graham (1856-1929) - his work led to the apparent first UK performances of a prototype electronic instrument to junior scientific audiences at London's Royal Institution in late December 1895 and early 1896.

Alfred Graham was the founder of Alfred Graham & Company (continued by his son of the same name) who put their horn-like electric loudspeakers on the market in 1887.  Graham, through his experiments in telephonic 'amplification', noted that when a carbon granule microphone was connected to a loudspeaker through a battery, and the microphone and speaker brought close together, a musical pitch would emerge - feedback.  The circuit was simple: carbon microphone, loudspeaker horn and a battery (not forgetting a switch).  Alfred Graham patented the soundmaking technique in 1894, and also specified a possible musical application where the microphone and loudspeaker are acoustically joined through a pipe with holes cut in it.  This alters the feedback's pitch by altering the resonance of the pipe.

One of Alfred Graham's 'electric flute' circuits

In his 1894 patent titled "A New or Improved Method and Means of Producing Sound" Graham suggests that the timbre of the tone may also be altered:
"The pitch, loudness or quality of the sound produced may be varied by varying the battery current in strength or changing its direction [polarity] or by changing the forms of the trumpets [loudspeaker horns] or varying the relative position of the instruments [the microphone and loudspeaker]"

Graham's technique was adopted as a showpiece by scientific lecturer John Gray McKendrick (1841-1926).  McKendrick, as a physiologist, wanted to amplify the sounds of the human body.  Such levels of amplification were hard to achieve (no electronic valves existed).  Inevitably, his experiments in pre-electronic amplification met with the extremities of self-oscillating feedback states described in Graham's patent.  McKendrick found this particularly inspiring and wrote a short paper on it in 1896 titled "Note on Mr. Alfred Graham's Method of producing Sound by an Electrical Arrangement".  He enthused that the apparatus "suggests the possibility of constructing a new kind of musical instrument.  Thus diaphragms might be tuned to the notes of the scale, and by pressing on keys, and thus completing circuits, musical notes having something of the quality of those of brass instruments might be produced.  Possibly, also, by piercing holes at proper distances in the flexible tube, these holes might be so fingered as to produce different sounds, and thus we might have an electric flute."

John G. McKendrick's sketch of the soundmaking circuit

McKendrick exhibited the electronic sounds at the aforementioned 1895 Royal Institution lectures in London, where he presented a series of demonstrations for young audiences dealing with sound, hearing and speech.  From what I can tell from limited information, he presented the tones unadorned - in a scientific manner - rather than demonstrating any adaptations to play musical ditties.  This was intended to inspire the young audience about the possibilities of electrical sound production - a technique to be refined by a future generation.

Alfred Graham did not market or pursue the musical possibilities of electronic sound.  Both his and McKendrick's experiments are apparently absent from the 'official' histories of electronic music.  Pushing telephonic sound to its limits to make feedback was rather too ahead of its time, and what was more useful at this time was the prospect of basic telephonic amplification.  Thus, Graham pursued the perfected reproduction of sounds rather than the generation of sounds.  He helped establish on-board communication systems on British naval ships.  His company later popularised the Amplion loudspeaker - designed specifically for radio sets in the 1920s.  It could be said therefore that Alfred Graham helped give electronic music its mouth...

LMJ #23 - "Electric Music" on the Victorian Stage

There are many obscure, under-explored sonic marvels to be found in the old music hall annals - I'm rustling to publish a detailed survey soon.  In the meantime, the latest Leonardo Music Journal (#23) features my paper on 'electrical music' in Victorian music halls, focussing specifically on the work of the eccentric Johann Baptist Schalkenbach and his imitators.  In the 1860s Schalkenbach developed an act in which he played on an amalgamation of instruments he called the Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur (built around a reed harmonium).  Whilst playing, he would simultaneously trigger musical, noise and optical effects via the electromagnetic triggering of circuits connected to objects placed around the hall.  It's a delicate precursor to the noise machines of the Italian Futurists.  Over the decades, the apparatus gradually became more spectacular as new features were added.

For some years now I've been hunting down ephemera relating to Schalkenbach and his copycats in the hope of shedding some light on the electrical music contraptions.  Precious little information exists, despite Schalkenbach performing for almost 40 years.   LMJ 23's "'Electric Music' on the Victorian Stage: The Forgotten Work of J.B. Schalkenbach" forms the most complete account so far of Schalkenbach's work.  My research also suggests that in the 1870s Schalkenbach assisted in the construction of acoustic magic tricks for celebrated magicians Maskelyne and Cooke.  Schalkenbach's conspicuous absence from the "standard" prehistory of electronic music can perhaps be accounted for by the lack of credible information about the electrical aspects of his Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur.  Minor gripes rooted in nationalism possibly also contributed to his present obscurity - one early review states that Schalkenbach's act met with great applause, but: "we fancy it would have gained still greater favour but for [his] singular resemblance to the great German Chancellor Prince Bismarck, which did not quite please some of the audience."

Maskelyne & Cooke's Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. (Demolished in 1905)

Schalkenbach played upon the mysteriousness surrounding "electrical music".  One newspaper reporter presumed that the rain sounds were electrically produced: "in a moment even electricity travels to the roof of the building and also to the apparatus around the hall, and causes vibrations as if a thunderstorm were heard approaching from the distance; you hear the howling of the wind and the downfall of a torrent of rain."   Investigations reveal that, in reality, the electric action was only employed to control a door, releasing buckshot that rattled down concealed descending shafts (later to become a popular off-stage acoustic rain effect).  But Schalkenbach's instrument was nevertheless very sophisticated.   In the 1890s, an electrical journal asked, "was it telephonically or phonographically that Herr J. B. Schalkenbach transmitted sounds to a distance?"  It is unlikely that either of these techniques were employed.  It appears to have been primarily electromagnetic triggering (including percussive sounds, motors, release mechanisms, explosives, detonations and light effects), the possibility of trembling-bell style feedback, and the basic wind bellows with their artful acoustic couplings through pipes and funnels.  Although, there are still many mysteries.

The descriptive, noisy, electrically actuated music pioneered by Schalkenbach was subsequently copied by many music hall acts, including Professor Beaumont (aka John Walmsley Beaumont) "Necromancer and Electric Musician", Herr Renier, and most interestingly, H. F. Juleene (aka John Parsons) and Dot D'Alcorn (aka Susette D'Alcorn), a double act who titled their demonic centrepiece Mephisto.   Dot D'Alcorn is possibly the first professional female performer of an electrical musical instrument.  Juleene and Schalkenbach had an interesting run-in played out in the The Era stage newspaper involving aggressive placement of adverts.

In performance, Schalkenbach played his own music (which does not seem to have survived), and also included selections from operas, such as Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici‬ and The Storm from Rossini's William Tell.   Mephisto on the other hand, was more grounded in music hall styles, and some original Juleene compositions do exist.  Dot D'Alcorn would play the electric instrument dressed as Mephistopheles.  I have transcribed the surprisingly twee Mephisto Gavotte (the electrical parts are not scored) - it gives a flavour of the Mephisto repertoire.  It is a MIDI arrangement:


Schalkenbach and his ilk are particularly interesting in relation to the post-electronic music techniques outlined on this blog and elsewhere.  In 'post-electronics', acoustic sounds are wrought with close adherence to classical electronic music techniques.  Essentially: acoustics aspiring to electronic sound.  In Schalkenbach's art, acoustics likewise aspire (or are styled) to 'electric' sound despite the utter non-existence of any "electric music" listening paradigms at that time(!).  Schalkenbach produces acoustic sounds - musical and non-musical - distant from the console, and presents them enigmatically as electrically produced sounds - sounds of mysterious provenance: the beginnings of sound art.

More coming soon...

Leonardo Music Journal #23 is out now.