Bag of Blood... LIVE
Late at Tate Britain... Friday 04.11.11
Often featuring guest musicians, Bag of Blood emerge from a putrid landscape of waste incineration
and scrap dealing found between the cracks of South East London's railway arteries.
sɜrbərəs by SONOFAPUP (2011)
Sonofapup has been producing electronic music projects since 1995. The music
generally involves the exploration of idiosyncratic and paranoid systems of logic.
'sɜrbərəs' is the phonetic spelling of the three-headed hound who is the mythical guardian of the underworld. Sonofapup, being a canine relation, was able to gain access to this underworld and these tracks are the hypnotic transmissions from that place.
'sɜrbərəs' - Collected output 2001-2005. Full download with bonus track 'Drug' from 1997.
Unsettling and genre melding electronic music, with strange melodies, overlapping rhythms,
probing low frequencies and odd details.
A Blizzard of Noise (Donder op Dender) 2010 - A Bag of Blood production
Featuring Steve Noble, Richard Wilson and Sean Dower
Above: Sean Dower on pyrophone, Richard Wilson on hand cranked siren. 29 min. Live performance at Netwerk Centre:with percussion, steam whistles, caskaphones, steel marimbas, cymbals, gongs, air hooters, sirens, pyrophones, rattles, pyrotechnics etc.
20 Pieces of Silver - Performance at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 26.07.07
Break it Down - A performance 2006
Break it Down - A performance 2006.
Performance photographs and information > Collaboration with the Artist Richard Wilson at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.
Live performance with percussion and visual effects.
Limited edition DVD produced by the Timothy Taylor Gallery.
See video excerpts at:www.performanceonfilm.com
7x7 took place on Richard Wilson's sculpture, the Slice of Reality.
(Seven performers choreographing seven sequences)
Audio Addiction took place at Delfina Studios, London with Guy Bar-Amotz, Sean Dower,
Natsuki Uruma, Richard Wilson and z'ev.
Insects 2004
Performance at Netwerk Centrum, Aalst (Belgium) with Guy Bar-Amotz 2004
The performance accompanied the exhibition Scahbbernak. In the exhibition, Dower
presented videos filmed in Sri-Lanka with the intense nocturnal sound of tropical forest .
Video of live performance and exhibition at Netwerk Centrum, Aalst.
Zombie Box 2003
Installation shot at Metropole Galleries, Folkstone.
See Zombie video on YouTube - 6.50min
Zombie Box 2003 (Packing crate, carpet, video & soundtrack by Sonofapup - 6.50min)
Video monitor and speakers, packing crate (244 x 76 x 76cm), green carpet (488 x 76cm).
A series of photographs and digital audio recordings made at specific sites across
London in 1997. The recordings reflect localised sound culture and its interaction
with architecture, technology and the natural world.
Above: Farringdon - Passing Alley (#7)
Other sites included Blackfriars (#1), Brixton (#2), Camden (#3),
Chelsea (#4), Hackney (#5), Bermondsey (#6), Portabello (#8),
Regents Park (#9) and Whitechapel (#10).
Body Music Suit 1993
The Zodiac Strikes Again 1993
In this video, the suit transmits the recording of an assasin
making his way through a building to a high vantage point,
before taking aim and shooting at two targets. The artist acts
out the role, synchronous with the soundtrack (4 mins).
Body music suit 1993 (boiler suit, speakers, cable and music delivery system)
The suit was designed to experience sound and music directly via the body's organs.
Bow Gamelan Ensemble 1988 - 1992
A Damn Near Run Thing at London’s Jubilee Gardens in 1988.
In 1988 Dower began working with the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, a performance art group based in
London’s East end. Richard Wilson, Anne Bean and the percussionist Paul Burwell formed the
ensemble in 1983 and Dower worked with them from
1988 to 1992. The Bow Gamelan toured
internationally, fusing performance, pyrotechnics, sculpture and sound into large-scale, chaotic
live events.
A Damn Near Run Thing 1988.
Archive image of the performance.
The Ketford barge at Waterman's Arts centre on the Thames at low tide 1989.
Dazzle painting design by Sean Dower (after Norman Wilkinson). The Ketford was
restored for The Navigators, a series of live performances by the Bow Gamelan on
the Thames, from Bow in the East to Richmond in the West. The performers lived
and worked on board for several months.
Basle 1991. Video of Dower experimenting with 2 kinetic sound sculptures.
The Curfew recordings were made at night in a disused, industrial storage silo in Derwenthaugh,
near Newcastle Upon Tyne. The acoustic recordings were made in collaboration with John Smith
(performance artist and publisher of interchange magazine/side real press). The huge, plate steel
cylinders had been used for bitumen storage and had an exceptional ambient quality. The resulting
recordings had no effects added to them and were made using a range of instruments, including
bowed metal, bull roarers, human thy-bone trumpet, and the steel structure itself.
Curfew Recordings, video/sound (2004/1984) 4 min. excerpt from 23 min.
The Curfew recordings were made without elctricity and the only available light was
from candles. Sound is manifest through air movement and the candle in this video
flickers as a result of the air displaced by an array of speakers, through which the
soundtrack is being replayed. The candle's movement acts as a kind of visual correlate,
or 'meter' to the music. Viewed on a monitor in a very dark space with speakers.
Death Magazine 52 / Spontaneous Human Combustion 1983
Death Magazine 52 / Spontaneous Human Combustion made provocative audio-physical
performances using tape machines, electronics, percussion, super-8 films and other visuals.
They performed at Richard Strange's Slammer club in London and at the Equinox Event at
the London Musicians Collective, as well as at numerous venues around Birmingham and
the midlands. The band often mislead promoters in order to gain live slots at unsuspecting
venues, which usually resulted in extreme audience reactions. LATEST NEWS... DEATH MAGAZINE 52
Double 12" vinyl release containing both studio and live recordings due out in 2011
Label: Harbinger Sound
Flyer for the infamous Equinox Event, London Musician's Collective 1983.
Death Magazine 52 were a late additionto this early festival of noise music. On the day,
the event was dogged by violence and complaints about the noise from local residents.
The band Whitehouse had been barred from playing and D.Mag 52 invited their vocalist
Phillip Best to perform with them. Best was attacked on stage and a police raid halted the
event shortly after. The original cassette release of the Equinox Event didn't include this
final curtailed performance, but a recording of it and the aftermath of the police raid is
included on the 2011 Harbinger Sound release.
Prehistory...
Beached percussion 1982
Dower playing oil barrels washed up by an Atlantic storm in Pays Basque
Far from killing music, the cassette revolution allowed bands to distribute
their own material. Dower began experimenting with electronics and
percussion and joined the Midlands based band Death Magazine 52 in 1983.
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