Bowditch > Southend Objectified

Pro-duplicated yellow cassette (Edition of 60) with full colour cover and printed labels on Fractal Meat Cuts.

"This collection of tracks comes at a critical and volatile time in both personal and creative aspects of my life. I needed to push things into a new direction as I was unhappy with my previous processes and set up. Reliance on the familiar was taking hold and I needed to get more unpredictability and reactivity into making and performing. So I dropped my old Hybernation alias in favour of my name, found some different tools and got to work on objects and recordings from my home town."

A1. Town Crier's Bell
A2. The Railway Hotel Gents Toilet Hand Dryer (Broken)
A3. Kenco Coffee Tub

B1. Flooded House
B2. Bear Pit (Point B)
B3. S.O.U.T.H.E.N.D. (Sewage Outlet Under Thames Hides Even Nastier Discharge)

Town Crier's Bell

In 2013 I was seeking out sounds to record for a Southend based computer game and Kevin Marsh at The Beecroft Gallery asked me if the old Town Crier's bell would be of interest. That would be great, I replied and he tried to see where it was residing within the Southend Museums system. The bell, which was used frequently in the 19th and 20th Centuries, was eventually found tucked away in an old box, and after Roger the volunteer had rung it for me I had a great new sound to add to the game. I recently dug out the old recording, extracted a 16 second sample and made this track using the Samplr iPad app.

The Railway Hotel Gents Toilet Hand Dryer (Broken)

The gents toilets at the Railway Hotel in Southend is not somewhere usually described as inspirational. For several months the hand drier was broken and made a very loud screeching noise as it spread germs around. Daryl Easlea, a fellow DJ on Ship Full Of Bombs internet radio station, sent me a recording of it that he had made on his mobile phone, which I then fixed using a Teenage Engineering OP-1 and the Samplr iPad app.

Kenco Coffee Tub

In April 2016, Jon Kipps’ and I launched our Proscenium release (Courier Sound) with a gig at the Ten Bells in Shoreditch. I was testing out my new laptopless live set up and found this Kenco Coffee tub in the studio of artist Alan Hockett, which sounded like it would be a good test subject. This track is a live recording of a practice jam for the gig, using a Teenage Engineering OP-1 and the Samplr iPad app.

Flooded House

This track was made in response to a recent project that I was invited to make a piece of work for. But then a few days later I was told that the funding hadn’t been secured. So I made another piece of work anyway using an almost identical name. The source sounds are taken from a Creative Partnerships project in 2011, with year 5 pupils at William Read School in Canvey Island to make a film about sea creatures. I had a small ‘sound crew’ to help create the sound track to the film and over 5 weeks we recorded lots of watery sounds, in the school sink, puddles in the playground and at Thorney Bay beach. In 2016 I took a few of these sounds and resculpted them into ‘Flooded House’ using the Samplr iPad app.

Bear Pit Point B (Version 2)

Recorded during my artist residency at Focal Point Gallery in 2015. The ‘Bear Pit’ was a wooden space built in Gallery 1 in which there were several artist residencies throughout the summer of that year. My project Resonants - Bear Pit turned the pit into a playable instrument. By attaching a collection of contact mics to the fabric of the wooden structure, the sound of it was played through speakers attached to its walls. This amplified sound, together with the movements of the audience around the space and gestures made by them with the contact mics created a rather noisy sound installation. This track is made from a 20 second sample of the sounds from contact mic B, improvised in one take on a Teenage Engineering OP-1.

S.O.U.T.H.E.N.D.

I had thought of the acronym Sewage Outlet Under Thames Hides Even Nastier Discharge several years ago. When thinking about this body of work, I wondered how I could make a musical version of it and recalled that artist Josh Langan had discovered a long storm drain that runs under the town. He had in fact made a film down there and agreed to let me use the sound of him and some friends larking about in the tunnel. So, I ripped the audio from his film and sloshed it through the Samplr iPad app a few times.