DAY 4
dumdum SCORE chosen by Bill Furlong for Audio Arts Magazine
Audio Arts was a British sound magazine published on audio cassettes documenting contemporary artistic activity via artist or curator interviews, sound performances or sound art by artists
The demise of industrial Tyneside. The People v Thatcher - SLAB 1984
SLAB was sonically constructed at the time of the miners strike to represent the anguish, hardship and unemployment that was a direct result of the political destruction and neglect of heavy industry and the north-east's mining communities by Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government. At that time dumdum SCORE represented Tyneside's art music scene, newly termed 'industrial music' by the press. The piece is produced to reflect the sound of toil and hard labour that resonated from Wallsend to Scotswood road. That constant backdrop of sound was to disappear along with a way of life that had existed for decades. The track appears on the album 'audio sheep' that was released two years later as a stereo piece although it was manifested live as a multi-media production including advanced projection techniques and multiple directional speakers to engulf the audience with 'Tyneside's industrial sound' .
Luck Love 1984
Recorded at Spectro Arts workshop Electronic music studio (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne UK) in July 1984.Luck Love consisted of three 20 foot tape loops that snaked around the studio, mixed live, and 'bounced' to a Revox A77. It was the only finished piece that was recorded by Fielding & Simpson as Ju Ju Pell Mell that made it to the later 'Audio Sheep' album. It remains one of their stand out compositions for it's obtuse rhythm , a strange echo of the ethereal , 'unknown continent' that it portrays. A rhythm that is intertwined with a meandering atonal voice loop that intermittently breaks cover into tonal splendour. Listen here
DDS where given the use of recording equipment by NMW and asked to make an 'album' in just two weeks. A vinyl album was released in December 1987.It was a collection of fourteen experimental pieces put out in 'sketch form' assembled from various recordings, and included a track named 'Heads of tulips' ,featured in Audio Arts Magazine alongside Andy Warhol and others (more here ) and now archived in Tate Modern.
It became an instant 'controversial' album because of its 'white label' packaging and perceived 'attack' on the music industry of the day. The working title 'audio sheep' was aimed directly at a business that strived to 'control' which music the public was allowed to hear and the media that 'followed' it...