Listen Club
Location
The Rose Hill
70-71 Rose Hill Terrace
Brighton
BN1 4JJ
Date & time
Monthly on Wednesday evenings from 19:00-20:30
Next Listen Club:
16 September 2025
Curated by Al Strachan
Listen Club #27: ‘Body Sounds’ curated by Al Strachan 16/09/2025
Ever since putting a hydrophone into his mouth (followed by some popping candy and a tuning fork), Al Strachan has nurtured an interest in how the human body can be utilised by musicians and sound artists. In this Listen Club, he delved into the early history of this practice, with artists incorporating heartbeats, digestive gurgles and more into their sonic adventures.
| Biogenesis excerpt (1973) | Elianne Radigue | 3:44 |
| Electro Kardiogram excerpt (2003) | Kraftwerk | 1:06 |
| Hands excerpt (2003) | Four Tet | 2:01 |
| My Galloping Heart excerpt (2002) | Sten Hanson | 3:00 |
| Milford Graves Full Mantis excerpt (2018) | Milford Graves | 10:31 |
| Mouth-To-Mouth Method excerpt (2001) | Johannes Bergmark and Unn Fahlstrom | 3:00 |
| La Digestion excerpt (1974) | Henri Chopin | 1:20 |
| One Hour As The Body Pt 1 excerpt (1996) | Michael Allen Z Prime | 2:07 |
| Our Song from Music from The Body (1970) | Ron Geesin + Roger Waters | 1:28 |
| Cocktails For Two excerpt (1945) | Spike Jones | 0:32 |
| Mr LEFIRES excerpt (1904) | Joseph Pujol ‘Le Petomane’ | 0:27 |
Al Strachan is an improvising musician who uses cornet, electronics and hydrophones to create soundworlds. He is also a key member of three Brighton-based music and sound art collectives: Safehouse, Lost Property and Sound Art Brighton.
Listen Club #26: curated by Hazel Reeves
09/07/2025
When it comes to the natural world, there are many reasons to fret. But, is there a glimmer of hope? Hazel’s work harnesses the sounds of nature to tell stories of hope, of burgeoning biodiversity in sites of rewilding and other nature havens.
The first half of the session featured field recordings at the pioneering Knepp rewilding estate – in the scrubland, in the lakes, in the beaver pen, in the white stork enclosure. Hazel’s dedication to the break of dawn forays in spring into the scrubland, were kicked-off by hearing her first nightingale, which thrive here yet face cataclysmic declines elsewhere.
In the second half Hazel shared excerpts from soundscape compositions created for playful, immersive, affecting nature soundscape experiences for all, such as Sculptural Murmurings (Fabrica), Moving with Nightingales (Pallant House) and Bird Hide (SMARTsheds, Devil’s Dyke). These compositions are based on field recordings from the UK and beyond.
| Recordists / Collaborators | ||
| My first nightingale recording, 2019, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 1:03 |
| Favourite nightingale, 2022, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 1:11 |
| Video: Nightingale: slow tempo same pitch, Knepp Estate | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:53 |
| Video: Nightingale: pitch-lowered, same speed, Knepp Estate | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:46 |
| Nightingale with a croak and chuckle, 2025, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:33 |
| Buzzing nightingale, 2025, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:24 |
| Dawn chorus with Turtle Dove, 2025, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:59 |
| Video: Knepp: South vs North blocks, 2023, Knepp Estate | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 1:03 |
| Beaver mewing compilation, 2025, Knepp Estate | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 1:00 |
| White Storks, 2025, Knepp Estate (excerpt from soundscape compilation) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate, White Stork Project | 0:48 |
| Snuffling Tamworth pigs, 2024, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 1:09 |
| Mystery panting at the beaver lodge, 2023, Svartådalan, Sweden (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Stefan Taylor | 1:08 |
| Who’s that snoring?, 2022, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Knepp Estate | 0:30 |
| What’s that nibbling my mic?, 2024, Aulus-les-Bains, France (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Camp Fr | 0:23 |
| Video: #LoveScrubland, 2021, Knepp Estate (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Olga Saavedra Montes de Oca, Maria da Luz, Knepp Estate | 1:10 |
| Video: Sculptural Murmurings, 2021, recordings Knepp Estate, venue Fabrica (excerpt) | Hazel Reeves, Ean Currie, Roz Shearn, Rosaria Gracia, Olga Saavedra Montes de Oca, Maria da Luz, Helen Goodwin, Knepp Estate | 1:36 |
| Soundscape of Hope, 2023, recordings Svartådalan, Sweden (full soundscape composition), venue Fabrica | Hazel Reeves, Stefan Taylor, Fabrica, MET College, Orsi Cowell-Lehoczky, Rosaria Gracia, Olga Saavedra Montes de Oca, Maria da Luz | 7:37 |
| Video: Knepp Dawn, 2024, Hazel Reeves and Damian Montagu, Moonshot Music Label | Hazel Reeves, Damian Montagu, Moonshot Music Label, Sandra Reeves | 3:17 |
| Birds of Sussex, 2025, recordings – various (excerpt from composition) | Hazel Reeves, Sandra Reeves, SMARTsheds | 2:48 |
Listen Club #25: curated by Adrian Newton
18/06/2025
Adrian presented a series of short sound clips recently gathered from various natural environments, using diverse recording techniques. These include ancient woodlands affected by climate change, beaches polluted by plastic, the hidden sounds of anthills, bumblebee nests, chalk streams, beaver colonies and sand dunes.
We explored what these recordings can reveal about the impacts of people on wildlife and the ecological processes occurring around us, and considered how our responses to these changes might be examined through the use of field recordings in music and sound art.
| Notou (3:05) | ||
| Blackbird has spoken (excerpt) | ||
| Heal Somerset (excerpt) | ||
| Sound dunes (excerpt) | ||
| Sound fishing (excerpt) | ||
| Frenemies (excerpt) | ||
| Tipping point 4 (excerpt) | ||
| Heartwood (excerpt) | ||
| All trees are clocks (excerpt) | ||
| Ocean of plasticity (excerpt) |
Adrian Newton spent several decades researching the impacts of humans on ecosystems while working as an ecologist for various research institutes, universities and the United Nations Environment Programme. For the past fifteen years, he has also been a practising sound artist, creating work that examines the sounds of environmental change.
His sound work has been featured in numerous national and international festivals and broadcast on national radio. He also produces the monthly internet radio show and podcast, Sound Mosaics for a Broken World.
Listen Club #24: Sonic Hauntings, curated by Joseph Young
28/05/2025
Sound artist Joseph Young played recordings from his recent album ‘Sonic Hauntings in a Big House’, released in December 2024 on Irish sound art label, Farpoint Recordings. As a starting point for this investigation, the curation then rippled outwards as we listened to its circles of influence.
| Sonic Hauntings in a Big House | Joseph Young | |
| Rewind | ||
| The Big House is always there | ||
| The Poetics of Space | ||
| Safe Beneath His Cross | ||
| The Séance at Hob’s Lane (2001) | Mount Vernon Art Lab | |
| The Stone Tape (1972) | Desmond Briscoe & BBC Radiophonic Workshop | |
| On Vanishing Land (2017) | Mark Fisher & Justin Barton | |
| Patience (after Sebald) (2012) | The Caretaker | |
| The Shed Record (2000) | Aeron Bergman & Alejandra Salinas | |
| Stones that move and grow (2019) | Embla Quickbeam | |
| These charms may be sung over a wound (2020) | Richard Skelton | |
| There is nothing left here (2006) | Susan Philipsz | |
| The Missing Voice: Case Study B (1999) | Janet Cardiff | |
| The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017) | The Otolith Group |
Joseph Young’s work was created by exploring the extensive family archive held at Bray’s Killruddery House & Gardens in Ireland as part of a practice-based Phd. He devised both a geolocated soundscape in Killruddery’s grounds and this accompanying record, which further proposes a spectral glimpse of a lost past.
Listen Club #23: Sound, Scores and Poetry, curated by Will Montgomery
16/04/2025
In this talk Will Montgomery explored the rich history of text-sound interaction in radical C20 and C21 soundworks, with a particular focus on poetic constellations of text and on the cross-talk between score and poem. He addressed the emergence of the text score in the work of John Cage and New School alumnae associated with Fluxus in the late 1950s and early 1960s; the confluence of post-Cagean performance, scores and poetry in the work of the Wandelweiser collective in the late 2000s and early 2010s; field recording as a facet of composition; the erosion of the performer/ audience distinction in some realisations of text scores; the long-running collaboration between US poet Susan Howe and musician David Grubbs; walking and scores; and recent work by Matana Roberts, Moor Mother and Redell Olsen.
| 2010(1) YouTube documentation | Manfred Werder | |
| July Mountain | Michael Pisaro | excerpt 3:36 |
| The Shipwreck of the Singular | Michael Pisaro | 5:03 |
| Thorow | Susan Howe and David Grubbs | excerpt 0:30 |
| Woodslippercounterclatter (1967- 70) | Susan Howe and David Grubbs | excerpts 1:35 and 1:51 |
| excerpt from YouTube performance documentation | M Nourbese Philip, Zong | 3 :00 |
| We finished with a collective performance of Werder’s 2005 (1) |
Will Montgomery is a Reader in contemporary poetry and poetics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Short Form American Poetry: The Modernist Tradition (Edinburgh, 2020) and The Poetry of Susan Howe: History, Theology, Authority (Palgrave, 2010). He co-edited (with Robert Hampson) Frank O’Hara Now: New Essays on the New York Poet (Liverpool UP, 2010) and (with Stephen Benson) Writing the Field Recording: Sound, Word, Environment (Edinburgh, 2018). He has published many articles on contemporary poetry. He has a long-standing involvement, as critic and practitioner, in contemporary experimental music and field recording. In recent years, he has worked with Emmanuelle Waeckerlé and numerous collaborators on the Walking in Air project.
Listen Club #22: Sound Atmospheres, curated by Jean Martin
19/03/2025
Sound affects us – when we listen. We all feel it, yet find it difficult to articulate, what these feelings are. The idea of atmosphere helps focussing on the in-betweenness of these feelings: triggered by sound yet residing in the perceiving body and the sense-making mind. Whether it is composed music or environmental soundscapes, our ears are open to hear. How do we listen and what happens while we are listening?
Jean used the idea of atmosphere as the link between these diverse sonic shapes. Atmosphere originally relates to the air surrounding the earth and to weather phenomena. It can be applied to sound, which has also an immersive quality. Even to humour, which he explored in the second part of the evening.
| Part 1 | ||
| Presque Rien N° 1 (1967- 70) | Luc Ferrari | 3 :00 |
| Soundscape | Birds morning chorus, funeral church bells, (Vienne) | |
| Military air planes | Training fighter pilots, Soundscape | |
| Petites Esquisses d’oisseaux (1985) | Messiaen | 2 :06 |
| La Fauvette Passerinette | Messiaen | 2 :42 |
| Lontano (1967) | Ligeti | 11:47 |
| Part II Dystopian and Sci-Fi soundtracks (extracts) | ||
| Love bounce | Film soundtrack collage “I love you” | 5:00 |
| Chernobyl Series Eps.1 | Hildur Guðnadóttir | 4:12 |
| Trapped Series 1, Eps. 1 | Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir Rutger Hoedemaekers | 5:34 |
| Arrival | Jóhann Jóhannsson | 5:50 |
Jean Martin has composed music and created sound for various purposes, including live performance. He has written about film sound and music in a book, in articles and produced programmes on contemporary art music for German Public Radio.
Listen Club #21: Sound Sparks, curated by Bethan Prosser
19/02/2025
“Listening is a broader capacity to attune and attend that supports processes of reflection and empathy, compassion and care, for oneself and for others, which may assist in contending with the systems around us.” (Brandon LaBelle, 2021: 15)
Sound sparks are ideas or thoughts sparked through listening. Field recording and soundscape compositions tend to be solo explorations – but in what ways can we listen with others to our surrounding environment, and what can we learn together?
Bethan sonically shared her journey in developing participatory listening research, through tracks that have inspired her, her own field recordings, and group compositions. Participatory listening research is a way of listening with others to the environment whilst embracing different listening experiences, practices, and positionalities. Her explorations include: academic research into the sonic experiences of urban seaside gentrification with residents, community groups, and local policymakers on the Sussex coast; and listening projects with Brighton & Hove Music for Connection with older people and community wellbeing groups across the Downs and urban fringe.
| Intro | Isobel Anderson | 1:30 |
| Subway playing, 2019: Sounds to Keep participants, Bela Emerson & Bethan Prosser | Recorded by Bethan Prosser | 1:50 |
| Mystery Rumbles Underscore, 2019: BBC Radio Brighton – Good morning 1977 (Chris Warbis; David Clitheroe; Gordon Taylor), underscore by Sounds to Keep participants, Bela Emerson & Bethan Prosser | Recorded by Bethan Prosser | 2:26 |
| RiTA – Winter soundscape, 2020: Sound Mosaics participants, Bela Emerson & Bethan Prosser | Recorded by Bethan Prosser | 3:11 |
| Hollingbury Hillfort Chimes, Changing Chalk ILWs, 2024: Bela Emerson & Changing Chalk participants | Recorded by Bethan Prosser | 1:57 |
| Stammer Leaves, 2022: Sounding Stanmer participants, Bela Emerson & Nell Howes | Recorded by Bethan Prosser | 3:50 |
| Getting Lost (2015) | Isobel Anders & Tulllis Rennie | 8:50 |
| Worthing listening walk, 2020 | “Dr X” | 1:30 |
| St Leonards listening walk, 2020 | Stiv Addison | 4:06 |
| Unintentional Ex Situ Listening, 2020 | Bethan Prosser | 5:16 |
| Listening to Circus redevelopment | Bethan Prosser | 3:51 |
| “Sound” sculpture, Sound Sparks participants | Recorded by participant | 1:34 |
Bethan Mathias Prosser strives to bring academic and practice-based listening approaches together to creatively understand issues of social justice and place. She has developed a Participatory Listening Research approach through doctoral and post-doctoral research. Her PhD used listening methods to investigate residential experiences of urban seaside gentrification and displacement injustices on the UK south coast.
Alongside research, Bethan works with Brighton & Hove Music for Connection, the city’s specialist community music organization, developing Interactive Listening walks and music-making activities.
Check out Bethan’s Participatory Listening Research website for more info on her projects and research.
Listen Club #20: Sonic Thinking through Waste, curated by Chris Sciacca
15/01/2025
Chris played selections of recordings from his research on electrical waste, featuring the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility and Southampton’s cargo shipping lanes. Several recordings and compositions are created from microphones created with household waste like, PET4,5,6 plastics, converted desktop speakers, tin, and Styrofoam.
| Piezo microphone static noise sweep | ||
| Soundscape of neighborhood recycling collection | ||
| Styrofoam rain collection | ||
| EMR Newhaven Scrap Metal Symphony | ||
| Composition of scrap metal soundscape through logarithmic pitch and speed curve | ||
| Styrofoam soundscape of nature sounds with sounds from the Veolia Energy Recovery Facility. | ||
| Incendiary Soundscape: Rhythmic pulse of Veolia ERF frequency 140-150Hz | ||
| Southampton industrial dock-loading sounds. | ||
| Southampton Cargo Lanes “passing ship” engine through hifi microphones. | ||
| Southampton “passing ship” composition with scrap mic superimposition. |
Listen Club #19: Winter Sounds
Curated and introduced by Sound Art Brighton
11/12/2024
To mark the turn of the sun and the year, the December Listen Club dove into wintery sounds: winter ambiences, music played on ice instruments, winter field recordings, winter songs, sound of ice installations, howling blizzards and winter animals.
| Winter Storm Ambience | 6:00 | |
| Ice Breaker (2004) (Sound Installation – excerpt) | Douglas Henderson | 4:00 |
| Frozen Warnings from The Marble Index (1968) | Nico | 4:00 |
| Verschollen (1996) (Excerpts) | Lutz Glandien | 5:00 |
| Svartisen from Winter Songs (2010) | Terje Isungset | 4:01 |
| glacial (2005) (ice installation – excerpt) | Max Eastley | 3:27 |
| Art Bears The Winter Wheel from Winter Songs (1979) | Art Bears | 3:07 |
| Baikal Ice (Spring 2003) (2003) (Excerpts) | Peter Cusack | 5:30 |
| Gestures of Thaw (Sólheimajökull, Iceland) (2022) | Pablo Diserens | 5:00 |
| Doctor Shivago (Wolf Scene) (1965) | 1:54 | |
| Winter-01, Snow Harp (2013) | Bruce Odland | 4:10 |
| Cracking chestnuts, from Chestnuts Roast and Peel Sound Effects (2021) | Free sounds and music | 3:36 |
Listen Club #18: Peter Cusack: Music, the Environment, Remixed
20/11/2024
Field recordist and musician Peter Cusack played tracks in which music and the sound environment come together, where the music takes on elements of the soundscape and where the acoustic environment is heard musically.
For millennia, people have believed that the environment speaks through its sounds and have made music to communicate sonically in response. We live in a time of unprecedented environmental crisis. Can recognising the close relationships between musical and environmental sound offer different, more positive attitudes to the world in which we all live?
| 2 Javan Flutes (1976) | Jogun, Sabina | Excerpt |
| Rag Shivaranjani (1994) | Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz | 7:22 |
| Blackbird (2000) | Jeff Beck | 1:27 |
| Oilfield Soundwalk (2022) | Peter Cusack | 7:09 |
| Carousel feeding Killer Whales (2009) | Heike Vester | Excerpt |
Other tracks were played but all are as yet unreleased personal recordings by Peter:
- North Thailand night time forest soundscape
- North Thailand village – khene playing
- North Thailand village – choir singing Italian hymn
- Seeds, spores and pollen (Berlin) recording & guitar Peter Cusack
Peter Cusack is a field recordist, musician and researcher with a long interest in the sound environment.
Projects include community arts, researches into sound and our sense of place and documentary recordings in areas of special sonic interest.
His project Sounds From Dangerous Places explores soundscapes at sites of major environmental damage – i.e. Chernobyl exclusion zone, & UK nuclear sites.
Listen Club #17: Composing with Concrete, curated by Elona Hoover
30/10/2024
How does one make common worlds in contexts where relations to land have been severed by generations of concrete?
“The creation of the commons requires responsiveness, a turning toward one another, at the same time leaving space for adversity and silence… This is how commons must be approached, with a keen sensitivity to polyphony.” A.M. Kanngieser (2015)
In this session we listened to sonic compositions and experimental works that evoke earthly relations, question the separation between natural and urban, and explore ways of making common worlds in austere places. It also included a five-part sound piece composed by Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun which explores the silence, spaces of adversity, polyphony and responsiveness that emerge when listening with commons and concrete.
| Living Room Music – II. Story (1940) | John Cage | 2:25 |
| Enough still not to know (2015) | Keith Rowe/John Tilbury | 5:00 Excerpt |
| Midsummer, London – 10 Crossing the river- I am getting hungry and lots of people are talking about food. Also Jesus loves me (2024) | Kate Carr | 3:09 |
| Digging the pedospheric vibes II (2022) | Felicity Mangan | 5:28 |
| L’Ile re-sonante (2000) | Éliane Radigue | 10:00 Excerpt |
| urban nature | Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun | 4:48 |
| austere | Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun | 3:06 |
| cracks | Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun | 6:36 |
| alchemy | Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun | 4:43 |
| earthbound | Elona M Hoover and Matthieu Lebrun | 11:44 |
Listen Club #16: Deep Listening to the Unheard
26/09/2024
| Neolithic Cannibals Clip 1 (2024) | Neolithic Cannibals | 4:22 |
| Cave of Shells (2016) | John Kenny | 2:13 |
| Stone Tape (1972) | Nigel Kneale/BBC Radiophonic Workshop | 4:45 |
| Neolithic Cannibals Clip 2 (2024) | Neolithic Cannibals | 6:12 |
| In the Cave (2012) | Pepe Deluxe | 1:51 |
| Star Carr (2013) | Ben Elliot and Jon Hughes | 5:59 |
| Sound Marks (2024) | Rob St John / Rose Ferraby | 7:44 |
| Mycenae Alpha (1978) | Iannis Xenakis | 9:39 |
| Neolithic Cannibals Clip 3 (2024) | Neolithic Cannibals | 6:03 |
| Vision of Truth (1991) | Blake Baxter | 6:31 |
| The Landscape Listens (2022) | Caterina Barbieri | 8:07 |
Listen Club #15: Acoustic Light
10/07/2024
“We hear the rain not through silent falling water but in the many translations delivered by objects that the rain encounters” – D.G. Haskel
John Hull recorded in his cassette diary on blindness, that “…the steadily falling rain creates a continuity of acoustic experience” – [Hull, 1997]
Sound artist and researcher Julian Weaver auditions a range of works exploring rained and raining objects interspersed, for contrast, with their inverse.
We often listen to rain as it strikes the world around us, natural objects such as trees, plants, ground, water and also, but perhaps less so, the coverings we use for protection against it; umbrellas, bus stops, roofs, windows, tarmac. Rain then can be considered as an acoustic light that falls on us and the surrounding environment, describing it for any sensing life form.
| Talking Rain, Harangue I (1997) | Hildegard Westerkamp | |
| Hornwort (unreleased) (2005) | Lee Patterson | |
| re-rain (installation) (2016) | Kouichi Okamoto | |
| Minnaert Resonance Test (unreleased) (2018) | Julian Weaver | |
| Side A, Drip Music (1962) | George Brecht | |
| Photosynthesising Hornwort (2009) | Patrick Farmer | |
| Passau to Jochenstein Dam, A Sound Map of the Danube (2008) | Annea Lockwood | |
| The Noisiest Guys On The Planet (2019) | Jana Winderen | |
| #09 Guandu Nature Park, Taipei, Freshwater Organisms from Taiwan (2017) | Yannick Dauby | |
| L’Eau, Expériences musicales de Jean Dubuffet ou la Musique chauve (1961) | Jean Debuffet | |
| Shampoo, Fixed Air for Two Senses (2017) | Julian Weaver | |
| Pasvikdalen (2014) | Jana Winderen | |
| Suikinkutsu, Fieldwave, Vol. 2 (2021) | Eisuke Yanagisawa | |
| Leidenfrost effect, Dripping (2000) | Andreas Bick | |
| Dripping (2000) | Andreas Bick | |
| Holding My Breath in Imaginary Ponds, Endings (2016) | Kate Carr | |
| Fence in Rain, Snæfellsjökull, Iceland, Endings (2016) | Kate Carr | |
Julian Weaver is an artist and researcher who works primarily with sound. His work is currently focussed on matter, substance and sensing in scientific and ecological imaginaries and fictions.
He is also director of Finetuned, a company focusing on interdisciplinary research and curated projects that also provides consultative and technical services to artists and galleries, universities and industry. https://www.hypo.io
Listen Club #14
12/06/2024
For centuries music was either composed on paper or with an instrument, and in order to be heard, it had to be performed. But the authors of these pieces neither wrote nor played them; they are all meticulously composed, but performance always precedes composition. Plunderphonic works are often performed by people who are dead, would have refused to have anything to do with one another or never met and never will; you could call it a kind of zombie music – in short, impossible. Yet, it’s so common now you can’t escape it.
Listen Club #14 presents some of its milestones, traces the dialectic between art and pop that has driven it from the start and follows it out into the the zone where those distinctions cease to signify.
| Ommagio a Jerry Lee Lewis (1975) | Richard Trythall | 6:38 |
| Beyond the Valley of A Day in the Life (1977) | The Residents | 4:02 |
| Dolly Proton – pretender (1988) | John Oswald | 2:46 |
| Maria Callas (1989) | Christian Marclay | 3:07 |
| DJ Qbert Mixmaster Mike Apollo (1992) | DMC 1992 Final | 1:37 |
| Vientiane (1990) | Roberto Musci and Giovanni Venosta | 11:11 |
| Stem Long Stem (1996) | DJ Shadow | 7:48 |
| We Will Rock You, Bossa Nova! Mashup (2014) | Elvis vs RHCP vs Queen vs Flo Rida vs Cee Lo Green | 3:06 |
| The Anthology Vol. II []HIP HOP MIX []INSTRUMENTAL COMPILATION[] – selected works (2023) | Madlib |
Chris Cutler wrote the definitive and widely published essay on Plunderphonics. He is a composer, performer writer and broadcaster. He was in numerous bands, including Henry Cow, Pere Ubu, Gong, Art Bears and Cassiber, and worked with The Residents, as well as in dance, film, Hörspiel, theatre, soundscape, radio and orchestral projects. He runs the independent label ReR Megacorp, had published three books and numerous articles on music, and produces the long-running ‘probes’ podcast for the museum of modern art in Barcelona.
Listen Club #13
15/05/2024
Listen Club for long distance lovers
“The epoch of nonsense, our epoch, can begin.” Friedrich A. Kittler
In this edition of Listen Club, Ed Baxter auditioned a range of works which transported the
listener impossibly close to faraway beings and which occupy the uncanny space between our interior and exterior perception.
| A Matter of Life and Death (excerpt)(1947) | Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger | 5:34 |
| The Art of Talking (excerpt) (2009) | Chris Mann | 5:16 |
| Mouth Piece (excerpt) (2013) | Xentos Fray Bentos | 3:16 |
| Pressures of the Unspeakable (excerpt) (1991) | Gregory Whitehead | 6:48 |
| Intimacy & Distance (excerpt)(2009) | Ed Baxter | 12:48 |
| Birdbrain (excerpt) (2022) | Ed Baxter | 3:04 |
| The Exeter Whisper (excerpt) (2018) | Ed Baxter | 7:36 |
Ed Baxter is a radio artist and associate lecturer at the London College of Communication, where he teaches Sound Art. He was the co-founder, with Phil England, of Resonance FM and stepped down from his role as its CEO this year. With Chris Weaver he won a BASCA “Composer of the Year” award in 2013 for the audio element of NVA’s “Speed of Light” at Edinburgh International Festival. He has also been a concert and festival producer, bookseller, typesetter, publisher, script writer, installation artist, and co-editor of the Works of Thomas De Quincey.
Listen Club #12
10/04/2024
Andrés Saenz de Sicilia shared a selection of field recordings, compositions and experimental works, blurring boundaries between the natural and artificial.
We listened to the sonar-chatter of bats recorded in Priory Gardens and Chesfield, recorded using dual ultrasonic transducers!
| Priory Gardens (1998) | Michael Prime | |
| Kali, Gaea (2005) | Jacob Kierkegaard | 3:23 |
| Sequence 2 (1977) | Mike Ratledge | |
| Composition from the Soundscape of the Anthropocene Ocean (2021) | Jana Winderen | 6:45 |
| Let’s Go Out and Dance (excerpt)(1987) | Tibor Szemző | 10:54 |
| Forestscape (commissioned for Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics exhibition at ZKM, Karlsruhe) (2021) | Andres Saenz de Sicilia |
Andrés Saenz de Sicilia teaches philosophy at Northeastern University London and Central Saint Martins. His creative works and performances have been featured in programs at Café OTO, Whitechapel Gallery, BBC Radio, the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Documenta fifteen, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Villa Lontana, Flat Time House and ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. His music has been released on labels including 12th Isle, Good Morning Tapes and Villa Montana Records.
Listen Club #11
13/03/2024
Olivia Louvel curated a listening session inspired by:
Dogger/Ice LAND
of tectonic plates, shifting
of sea and land
of visions reconfigured.
The session featured tracks from her latest release, doggerLANDscape, and from her participation in Acoustic Cameras, a project which invites sound artists to annex the real-time flow of webcams located in various places around the world, in this instance, Iceland.
| We Are One Land (2023) | Olivia Louvel | 3:40 |
| When The Sea Will Rise II (2016) | The Digital Intervention | 7:54 |
| Water. It Must Be (2014) | Paul Kendall | 4:08 |
| Sonata I (1946-48) | John Cage | 2:50 |
| Madwoman’s Vision (1989) | Meredith Monk | 7:44 |
| Submerged (2009) | Jana Winderen | 6:35 |
| Doggerland DNA (2023) | Olivia Louvel | 4:41 |
| Sonata III (1946-48) | John Cage | 2:32 |
Olivia Louvel is a French-born British composer and artist whose work is presented in the form of sound recordings, sound art installations, video art, and live performances. She often works at the border of documentation and creation, unearthing: the writings of Mary Queen of Scots, an archival tape by Barbara Hepworth, and the fossilised trees on the Lincolnshire coast. She has recently presented her work at Middlesbrough Art Week, Towner Eastbourne, Phoenix Art Space, and The Hepworth Wakefield. Her research has been supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and the Arts Council. With LOL, she won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Sound Art at the Ivors Classical Awards 2023. http://www.olivialouvel.com
Listen Club #10
27/02/2024
Chris Sciacca and Kersten Glandien presented a survey of Radio Aporee, Maps of Sounds of the World and a selection of live audio streams from Locus Sonus.
Listen Club #9
23/01/2024
What happens when we listen to the interwoven elements of sound in film: music, sound effects, dialogue, and location recordings, apart from the visual scenes they imbue? Chris Sciacca guides us through a miasma of film sound for an evening of theatre of the mind.
| Film | Scene Description | Duration |
| Baraka (1992) Ron Fricke | Bali Kekac Song | 6:10 |
| Stalker (1979) Andrei Tarkovsky | Escaping into the Zone via railway cart | 9:06 |
| Blue (1993) Derek Jarman | excerpt | 3:48 |
| Blowout (1981) Brian DePalma | Opening Sequence into sound studio | 4:18 |
| Berberian Sound Studio (2012) Peter Strickland | Gilderoy dissolves into film | 6:26 |
| The Witch (2015) Robert Eggers | Black Phillip Speaks | 2:48 |
| Leviathan (2012) Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel | Selected edits Speaks | 7:42 |
| Sweetgrass (2009) Lucien Castaing-Taylor | Cowboy swears at sheep | 3:02 |
Listen Club #8
19/12/2023
This was our first Listen Club to feature an old-school, full length album playback.
Guest curated by artist Ring Modulator, we listened to the entire length of Brian Eno’s Ambient 4: On Land with a speaker set up detailed by Eno himself.
It featured a novel third Ambisonic/Hafler Circuit Speak System in a triangle formation by switching the positive and negative polarities from the rear speaker.
| Ambient 4: On Land (1982) | Brian Eno | 44:35 |
Listen Club #7
14/11/2023
Simon Emmerson on ‘Sound-Space-Place’.
| First stereo recording (1933) | Alan Blumlein | 2:00 |
| The Wizard of Oz unmasked (1939) | 1:00 | |
| Whalesong recordings mix (1970) | Roger Payne | 4:30 |
| Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) | Hildegard Westerkamp | 9:42 |
| Roaratorio (1979) | John Cage | extr. 5:35 |
| I am sitting in a room (1969/80) | Alvin Lucier | extr. indeterminate |
| Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) | Jonathan Harvey | 9:10 |
| Near and Far (at Once) (2022) | Simon Emmerson | 13:00 |
Composer, performer and writer Simon Emmerson has worked in sound and music made with technology for around 50 years. He has worked with instruments and live electronics as well as studio ‘tape music’. He writes: “The exploration and celebration of the spaces around us takes many forms. Sound and music can have the magical quality of taking us somewhere else. We can experience so many different spaces and places – some outside, some inside our heads; some close, some distant … and maybe even surreal or impossible.”
Listen Club #6
10/10/2023
Under the title Sound Works by Sound Artists Kersten Glandien digs into the sound tracks of spatial installations, sculptures, urban environments, custom-built instruments, performative
art sound art and projection art – and ponders the nature of compositions made to relate to
architecture, infrastructure, specific locations and spatial creations designed to be
experienced by a moving audience.
| Six Mirrors (Sechs Spiegel), Ludwigskirche Saarbrücken (1995) | Christina Kubisch | 10:00 |
| Your Favourite London Sound: Brixton Station (1998–2001) | Peter Cusack | 1:54 |
| Dukatenscheißer (2009) | Douglas Henderson | 3:00 |
| Your Favourite London Sound: Slamming Train Doors at Victoria Station (1998–2001) | Peter Cusack | 1:41 |
| Guitar Drag (1999) | Christian Marclay | 4:00 |
| Sonambients (1915-1978): October 12,1969 AM | Harry Bertoia | 5:00 |
| Your Favourite London Sound: Brick Lane (1998–2001) | Peter Cusack | 1:54 |
| Doggerland Channels (2022) | Olivia Louvel | 5:00 |
| Your Favourite London Sound: Nightingale & Substation (1998–2001) | Peter Cusack | 1:26 |
| 2 Aolian Harps pt.1 (1980) | Max Eastley | 5:03 |
Listen Club #5
12/09/2023
Pioneers of Electronic Music. Chris Sciacca chose a hypnotic blend of the originators of electronic music inspired by the documentary film Sisters with Transistors. The pieces range from modular synth polyrhythms, musique concrète with field recordings, ambient spoken-word dream sequences, and a classic horror soundtrack.
| A Sonic Womb (2019) | Suzanne Ciani | 8:53 |
| Second Breath | Suzanne Ciani | 9:05 |
| Pulse Persephone (1965) | Daphne Oram | 4:07 |
| The Dreams – Falling (1964) | Delia Derbyshire | 8:45 |
| Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind (1980) | Rocky Mountains | 3:04 |
| Patchwork (1980) | Laurie Spiegel | 9:47 |
Listen Club #4
20/06/2023
Chris Cutler chose an exciting programme of hybrid music and soundworks in which normally distinct languages or conventions are brought together in unexpected ways. Take a chance to rewire your synapses.
| I | ||
| Owen Springs Reserve (2014) | Hollis Taylor | 6:19 |
| Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) | Karlheinz Stockhausen | 13.08 |
| Three Bear Rooms (1996) | Chris Cutler | 4.44 |
| II | ||
| Agost (1976) | Musica Urbana | 6:54 |
| There and back Again (2006 – extract) | Chris Cutler | 12.42 |
| Farewell Party (2002) | Lloyd Green | 3.44 |
Listen Club #3
31/05/2023
Hosted by Chris Sciacca and presenting sound art, soundscapes and music compositions inspired by birds. Tracks include the earliest known recording on wax cylinder, extinct species, experimental analogue taper music, diverse field recordings, and a recording from inside the Laurenskerk in Rotterdam.
| Field Recordings and Location Sound | ||
| White-rumped Sham (1889) | Ludwig Koch | 1:04 |
| Gramophone matrix 7444r. Song of a nightingale (1910) | Karl Reich | 4.32 |
| The Fox and the Nightingal edit (2023) | Hazel Reeves | 2.54 |
| Explanation and Courting Song (1966) | Halaoff & Peter Bruce | 2.32 |
| Dawn with the white storks (2016) | Izabela Dłużyk | 6.16 |
| Electroacoustic composition and experimentation | ||
| Kauai O’o (2009) | Robert Davis | 1:25 |
| Syrinx (1979) | Ann McMilan | 4.38 |
| Slow Motion Blackbird (1994) | Chris Hughs | 5.47 |
| Musical Composition | ||
| Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of the birds) – Messiaen, 202 | Julien Hervé | 8:39 |
| 0.2 (2004) | Evan Parker with Birds | 8.29 |
Listen Club #2
11/04/2023
Curated by Al Strachan, this Listen Club focused on uses of the human voice in sound poetry and music.
| Meditations 3 and 3-2 | Propan | 4:04 |
| Zwevingen | Greta Monach | 7.14 |
| Long May I Sleeppppp | Xuan Ye and Chik White | 1.45 |
| Heavy | Audrey Chen | 2.32 |
| Early Morning Melody | Meredith Monk | 1.36 |
| Hot Tarmax | Ecka Mordecai | 2.32 |
| The Park | Robert Ashley | 21:36 |
Listen Club #1
14/03/2023
| Music for Quiet Spaces | Robin Minard | 15:46 |
| Ol-Olool-Ol | Chris Watson | 18:07 |
| OP 622526 | AGF & Porya Hatami | 6:34 |
| Lemon Grass | Chicago Underground Duo | 1:40 |