Alan Dunn – Before the sounds of ideas forming, Volume 3

O Yes, we are glad to have Alan Dunn amongst our midst. His experimental sound works can be listened to again and again. Kaleidoscopic, nostalgic, reaching out for the epic, they capture attention and memory at the same time, and thus lure the listener into the strange world of soundmemes that surround us.

Listen to Before The sounds of ideas forming and you hear a perfect sense of timing, a feeling for diversions, and the presence of Mr.Dunn bringing together what at first hearsight doesn’t belong together. I can imagine how sick he got at one point from listening to BBC’s Radio 1.

Word to Alan:

“In Volume 3, we hear excerpts from sounds created during my tenure with the groundbreaking Internet TV project ‘tenantspin.’

Volume 3 begins with curator Rene Block uttering ‘never mind the blocks’ to bridge the Sex Pistols with the tenantspin BBC Radio project SuperBlock, produced with Jeff Young; earworms in a dark city is a rare recording set at sea as two drunk men drift towards Liverpool and bang out half-remembered TV theme tunes and pop hits on the piano; Inspirophobia is an unpublished work queries what is being sung at the end of an Inspiral Carpets track: “I guess that makes me a bad man”, or, “It’s amazing in my mind,” or, “Been so lazy in my life,” or, “Kids amaze me in my mind.” Four tracks follow from the nogozones project, curated by Claudia Wegener, combining an audio file “no man like my father” produced by Karon and Tutu with recordings of my neighbour revving his Subaru up for four minutes every day at 6am.

Michael on the roundabout evolved from a tenantspin project with artist Wibke Hott and The Stoorry emerged from a creative writing class between The Greenhouse Project and artist Shane Beales before being remixed by local punk band Walk The Plank. Volume 3 continues with the Philip Jeck funeral-remix of my Take the mic away produced for Live at the vinyl junkyard with The Bluecoat. Por Convencion Ferrer is a soundtrack produced for David Jacques’ film of the same name, shot in an empty library, and Empty studio background/foreground were produced for Marion Harrison’s Short Fuse project, with air conditioning retuned to play Throwing Muses basslines and a text exploring the heaven/hell of an empty studio.

Before The sounds of ideas forming are sound sketches inspired by Guided by Voices, Jon Oswald’s Plunderphonics and Revolution 9. More details can be found here.