"Shifting Currents explores the unstable, unpredictable realm of electricity as a metaphor for the way in which music flows and changes around us"

Sound artist Bill Thompson has turned his microphones upon the silent and invisible world of electromagnetism for Shifting Currents, a new installation and performance coming to HCMF 2009.

Commissioned in partnership with Le Weekend festival in Stirling and Aberdeen's sound festival, Shifting Currents features electromagnetic recordings of distinctive and atmospheric places from each of the three locations, alongside improvised responses from Thompson, Keith Rowe and Rick Reed.

Shifting Currents explores the unstable, unpredictable realm of electricity as a metaphor for the way in which music flows and changes around us. In keeping with the found sound aesthetic of his previous work, Aberdeen-based Thompson has used a stick-on telephone microphone to capture electromagnetic signals and interference, transforming the inaudible waveforms into delicate and harsh sonic textures. He recorded in Stirling's historic Church of the Holy Rude, where the infant James VI was crowned, and in Fraserburgh Lighthouse on the windswept Aberdeenshire coast. In Huddersfield he found inspiration in the university's engineering department.

Shifting Currents receives its premiere on 30 May at Le Weekend before visiting HCMF and sound in November. The former wool blending shed at Bates Mill will play host to a constantly evolving multi-channel installation of Thompson's recordings, with Thompson, Rowe and Reed weaving the sounds into their own musical performances on guitar and electronics.

Keith Rowe has been a key figure in British improvisation since the mid-1960s, when a new year's resolution to stop tuning his guitar set him on a journey away from the jazz he was playing with Mike Westbrook and towards free music. As well as several decades as part of the group AMM, Rowe's career includes the founding of M.I.M.E.O. (who performed at HCMF 2007), and numerous solo and collaborative recordings. The one-time art student's break with traditional playing techniques parallels the innovation of Jackson Pollock's floor canvases: laying his guitar flat upon a table, he incorporates found objects, electronics, contact mics and radio transmissions into his music-making.

Rick Reed shares an artistic background with Rowe, and a home state, Texas, with Thompson. After college he moved to Austin and became involved in the city's experimental music scene, making music with synthesisers and tape machines, alongside video art and sound installations. Shifting Currents will also pay a visit to the November Music festival in the Netherlands, transmitting the intangible qualities and hidden music of Huddersfield, Stirling and Aberdeen to a new location.

Shifting Currents will take place on Monday 23 November, 10pm at Bates Mill and is a free event.

Shifting Currents is produced by hcmf// co-commissioned by hcmf//, Le Weekend and sound; supported by PRS Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn and Scottish Arts Council.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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