Lanternhouse remixes update and VJ loop pack

I have uploaded all the VJ loops I made for the first Meet The Artist day. They are available from The Internet Archive under creative commons licence for you to download and play with. They are all films I recorded on a flip camera around and about the Lanternhouse building.

If you do something with them please email a link to info@shaunblezard.com and I will feature it on the blog.

We have also had a further 4 remixes in, this time from Carlos Lemosh (US), Closed Eyes Are Dancing (UK) and All N4Tural (Germany). Check the Remixes page for more details.



All the remixes can be downloaded here


Lastly Clutter has an exclusive track on the current Classwar Karaoke compilation called Lanternhouse II which is available for free download here. It is one of his remixes of the Lanternhouse building.

House Of Bowls, Singing

A film collage of footage shot during the first Cumbria Remixed Meet The Artist day with resident artist Shaun Blezard at Lanternhouse on 25th February 2011.

For more details of further meet the artist days visit lanternhouse.org

Meet the artist and more

I had a fantastic day at Lanternhouse on Friday for my first Meet The Artist day. We had a steady stream of people coming to play and try their hand at remixing Lanternhouse with some stunning results.

Among my personal highlights were a mellow collaborative, improvised session with Ian McNichol's singing bowls and recordings of the building where a little ensemble created a beautiful audio visual treat for passers by.

There was also some great new VJ loops and sound recordings made and it was great to see people trying things out for the first time and really engaging with the technology. It was good to get to talk to people about the project and to make some plans to do some visiting and recording with people, also always great to get feedback and ideas for the project. Some really fun ideas coming to try out in the next few weeks.

Here's a collage of some of the music created during the day:



I'm starting to get a feel for what is achieveable and I'm excited about getting an interactive, improvised installation together by the end of the project. We got some amazing results from the test material of Lanternhouse and I will now start adding more sounds and film to the mix.

The next Meet The Artist day is on 9th March at Lanternhouse - visit http://www.lanternhouse.org/ for more details.

Remixing Lanternhouse - more remixes and other news

Another remix of Lanternhouse from the United States, this time from the talented Clint Newton aka Beed and Fascia who have sent the track Goodbye Faerie, Goodbye.

Clint said: 'Although I did do some processing and repurposing, it's more of a straightforward composition with some of the fragments. I kind of like the way it turned out... hope you do too! Thanks for the opportunity and thanks for listening!'

Beed and Fascia on Bandcamp
Beed and Fascia on Soundcloud

The wonderfully talented Phil Powell has sent us this beautiful track, Pause For Allan.

Phil says: 'This is a very melancholy mix. My uncle recently left this mortal coil far too quickly, after being diagnosed with leukaemia. His passing was so sudden, it took us all by surprise, and nobody really had a chance to say goodbye to him. I have known him all my life, and now he is gone. So this track is inspired by the moments I've been taking these past few days to pause, reflect, and to think about the many loving friends and family who are grieving at his passing.'

Phil is a resident in Ulverston and runs the amazing company We Make Media, who designed the Lanternhouse website.

Phil Powell on Soundcloud

We Make Media

All the remixes can be downloaded here

Also just a quick reminder I'll be in the foyer of Lanternhouse from 11am - 3pm tomorrow (25th February) if you want to drop by and find out more about the project or have a go at remixing Lanternhouse yourself. You can try your hand at soundscapes or VJing, or come and let me record your memories of Cumbria to add to the sound bank.

Test live visual broadcast on Justin.tv

This was a little test live visual broadcast I did on Justin.tv to try out the idea of live streaming a gig in the future - It is a live VJ set I performed along to audio recordings of me jamming - all using recordings of Lanternhouse. I just filmed the laptop screen, so all a bit lo-fi but keep a look out for more live streaming - Once I've sorted out the tech I'll let you all know when I do a live set - need to get the stuff working and find an interesting venue or two.


Watch live video from cluttermusic on Justin.tv

This will be around for a week or so then disappear, bit like iPlayer :-)

Many thanks to Steve Wade from Folly for telling me about justin, gonna have some fun with it I think.

I have also been working with Neil Wade on some Wii remote fun, still in developement but we're hoping to have a wii quartet happening in the near future.

Even more remixes of Lanternhouse

'I couldn't help but try to get something done for this the second I heard about it--the concept of the project is gorgeous' message from Tim of WaterGunWaterGunSkyAttack - Dallas, Texas

The remixing of the Lanternhouse building has really been catching the imagination of sound artists the world over in the first week. We have received 3 more submissions giving us a total now of 10. Just amazing to get such a response from everyone.

Visit the contribute or remixes pages to find out how you can get involved in Cumbria Remixed.

So on to the new remixes.....

The first new track is by WaterGunWaterGunSkyAttack and is called Urban Wren. Tim of the band said 'I couldn't help but try to get something done for this the second I heard about it--the concept of the project is gorgeous, and I've recently found that I love working with field recordings. Most of the samples in this track are heavily edited, resampled, and modulated; It's also not exactly as much of a soundscape as the seven tracks currently on your site, but I hope it doesn't stick out too much. I'm a resident of Dallas, Texas, without much of a musical CV to speak of. I probably haven't been doing this as long as the other people who've submitted remixes have, but hopefully you get some interest out of it.'

WaterGunWaterGunSkyAttack on Soundcloud



All the remixes can be downloaded here
Electricplum is Ulverston's very own Kirsten Taylor, known to many for her amazing singing voice, but showing she is also a very talented sound artist with the track Overworked Door Shot To Pieces By Frog.

Another remix from Bubble in Canada - this one is called Briad - John of Bubble said...along with the cumbria samples, there are sounds of crickets from india (lived outside bangalore for 5 years) , a tibetan singing bowl, my friend - an opera singer - singing into a piano resonating the strings (her idea!  :)) and a sine wave tone...

Bubble on Soundcloud

Remixing Lanternhouse - Meet The Artist Shaun Blezard

Friday 25th February - 11am - 3pm (Free Drop In Session)

Lanternhouse

The Ellers,

Ulverston,

Cumbria,

LA12 0AA

Drop into Lanternhouse to find out about Cumbria Remixed and meet sound artist Shaun Blezard. Record your memories and thoughts on Cumbria and help remix Lanternhouse itself!! No need to book, just drop in to see and hear what Cumbria Remixed is all about.

Cumbria Remixed is an exciting new digital sound project using digital technologies to investigate and remix the soundscape of Cumbria. It will create a lively dialogue between old and new, young and old through field recordings of Cumbrian environments, and local people’s tales, tunes, stories and songs. It will use digital technology to remix and remould our environment and our stories to create new soundscapes and songs.

Cumbria Remixed is a project by sound artist Shaun Blezard for Lanternhouse.

Shaun will be creating a series of works throughout the project both on-line, at Lanternhouse and around Cumbria. He would love to hear from you and work with your recordings of the county.

Other Meet The Artist days @ Lanternhouse with Shaun Blezard
Wednesdays 9th, 16th, 23rd & 30th March 2011 - 11am - 3pm (Free Drop in Events)

Resident sound artist Shaun Blezard will be running open house days to talk to the local community about his work and the Cumbria Remixed project. If you are interested in the project and want to try creating soundscapes, field recording, VJing or just want Shaun to record your memories and thoughts about Cumbria why not come along and join in. No experience necessary.

www.lanternhouse.org for more details on this project and others

More remixes of Lanternhouse

We have been sent another four remixes of the Lanternhouse buiding, making a total of seven in the five days since the Lanternhouse sample pack has been available for download.


The new remixes come from Canada, Swansea, Warrington and the first Cumbrian remix from Ambleside.

Bubble is John Sobocan from Toronto, Canada who has sent us Cumbria Shake Mix.

Bubble on Soundcloud :: Bubble biography

InternalExternal is Ambleside resident David Brown. Our very first Cumbrian based remix has sent us Cloudy Raintime, a very Cumbrian title.

InternalExternal on Soundcloud

Swansea sound artist Ian Holloway sent us the track Balefire. As well as being a great artist Ian also runs the experimental label Quiet World and the long running review fanzine Wonderful Wooden Reasons.

Quiet World :: Wonderful Wooden Reasons

Noise Research is Warrington based musician Ian Simpson, who has sent us The Lanternhouse Remix. Ian is a brilliant electro-acoustic improviser and can be seen in many incarnations around the North of England. He also finds time to run the amazing net label Electronic Musik and the Electronic Organica experimental music nights in Manchester.Electronic Musik



All the remixes can be downloaded here

Remixes from Italy & Yorkshire

We have received two more remixes of Lanternhouse, this time from Italy & Yorkshire, UK.

Keith Jafrate is a poet and saxophone player who also makes amazing sound art based in Todmorden in Yorkshire, UK. He is the driving force of jazz/electronics outfit orfeo 5. He has contributed the track Many Hearts.

orfeo 5 Website

orfeo 5 Myspace

Guido Lusetti aka Loalue comes from Italy and has given us Loalue - Lanternhouse (all the Cumbria lakes' remix)

Guido Lusetti on Soundcloud

Loalue on Myspace
Monbijoux on Soundcloud



All the remixes can be downloaded here

First Remix in from New England

Our first remix from the Lanternhouse Sample Pack has arrived - from New England in the United States.

Derek Piotr is a sound composer, currently writing an opera and constantly consumed by numerous other aural projects. He also interns for Meredith Monk & is the U.S. office of Antye Greie, but when he has free time he likes to write.

Derek Piotr on the internet:
Soundcloud
Wordpress



All the remixes can be downloaded here

Want to remix a building??

I have uploaded a sample pack of sounds recorded at Lanternhouse in Cumbria ready for download at:

Soundcloud & The Internet Archive
Please use the samples, have fun do a remix and please let us know if you do a remix as we would love to feature it on the blog and we are thinking of releasing a best of compilation as a net release.
If you do a remix please send us a copy - either to our soundcloud drop box or send to info@shaunblezard.com.

We will be featuring them on the blog and are hoping to do a net release with them in the future so get in touch. All will be under Creative Commons licence. Please include artist name, track title and website details so we can add you to this page.

Eunice and Eric Talk Chips

A recording of Eunice and Eric, who had a business in Barrow for many years then moved to Grasmere and had a very successful business there too. They are aged 92 and 93. Here they talk about when Eric's mam and dad had a fish and chip range fitted in their front room in 1925 when Eric was 8.

Many thanks to Christine for recording it and sending it in. Christine runs a great blog about the Lake District - check out http://englishlakes.wordpress.com/ for some amazing images and thoughts about the area.


If you have a story to tell, maybe a song or a piece of Music about Cumbria. Maybe you have a recording of the area: bird song, the sea, you doing the ironing - we are on the look out for sounds to add to the Cumbria Remixed sound bank.

You can send a sound either through our soundcloud drop box or email to info@shaunblezard.com

Stairwell Phase Composition II

Another test installation for the stairwell at Lanternhouse.

This one is a La Monte Young style drone work, again using 4 soundboxes.

For this piece I looped a small sample of an harmonium drone and created a bigger loop with a 1 tone change in it. I then created another 3 loops of different keys and length to create a drone composition that evolves over time.

The audience member can then change the mix by moving around the installation creating new tones depending on where they are standing.

Stairwell Phase Composition

I have been working in Lanternhouse today on a new test piece to improve my understanding of the relationship between the environment in which you place a sound installation and the way the audience perceives the work.

I created 4 loops of rhythms made from binaural recordings of the handrails on the stairwell, making them different lengths and tempos to construct a simple phase composition.

Having loops of different lengths and tempo means that they shift out of phase with each other creating an organically changing shifting pattern which evolves over time.

I installed them in 4 Lanternhouse sound boxes and put them at different points along the stairwell.

The listener can reposition themselves on different steps to change the sound mix they hear to create their own mix of the music. Setting a composition made from sounds of that particular environment also means the audience can interact with the installation by playing along with the composition through playing the handrails.

I'm really looking forward to developing this idea further next week. Here's a short recording with a fixed position recorder to give a flavour of what I got from today.




Lanternhouse Soundboxes

As a point of interest if anyone was wanting to know what makes up a soundbox here's a photo. They are a small black box with a cheap mp3 player and 2 self powered speakers inside.

I developed them for Lanternhouse with Fern Oxley with help from Bob at Lanternhouse for a youth sound art project we ran in summer of 2010 called Sonic Landscapes - we wanted to make a cheap 8 channel diffusion system that could be used in a park without a power supply and this is what we came up with. Each box cost about £30 and are usable outside, for indoor work 1 speaker was more than enough to fill a decent sized room.

Janice reads Bessie's Postcards

Janice Benson talks about postcards that belonged to her grandparents that she played with as a small girl.

She then reads some postcards from her Great Grandmother Bessie that Bessie sent to her family.

They are around 1904-1910 or so and Bessie was in service in one of the big houses on Abbey Road in Barrow-in-Furness.

The thing that really stood out to us looking through the postcards is the way postcards were like the text messaging of their day.

Simple unadorned messages from one person to another to get a small piece of information over leaving bigger stuff to letters/email. There's nothing earth shattering in any of the postcards just simple family communication, very similar to texts my family send to each other - 'you fancy pizza tonight', 'leaving now, back at five' type things.

Lanternhouse I

My first track made using found sounds recorded around Lanternhouse in Ulverston, imaginatively called Lanternhouse I.

The way I have been working for this track and for a number of years now is to start with field recordings. At Lanternhouse I recorded a host of sounds from kettles boiling, the lift going up and down, banging on handrails, playing the instruments in the music room, anything that catches my ear really. This was done with binaural and contact mics. I then use an audio editing programme to find small interseting parts of my field recordings to chop into loops - it may be that the rhythm is interesting, there's a kind of melody, or is just plain weird. I then have a bank of loops that I can then improvise with.

Lanternhouse I features piano, hamonium, traffic noise, fridge, fire extinguisher and hand rails.



I will be releasing the Lanternhouse field recordings as a remix pack so everyone can have a play with the sounds, I will feature some of the best on the blog - let me know if you're interested at info@shaunblezard.com