Still Standing, Still Useful

I have just uploaded a brand new track Still Standing, Still Useful which I have donated to Belgium net label Kopp for a new compilation they are releasing in the near future.

The music is edited from improvisations I recorded during a Meet The Artist day at Lanternhouse on 16th March, then edited down into a usable form - it is 3 sections overlapped to create the whole.

The voices are Eunice, talking about the scruffy houses she remembers as a child in Kendal and Arthur, talking about houses in Ulverston and the poverty people lived under then. Both sets of houses were built by local industry wool and snuff magnates in Kendal and the Mills in Ulverston.



I have contributed to Kopp before, donating an exclusive track The Moon Of Pity to the compilation Basic Imprint in 2010. They release some brilliant dark ambient and experimental music under Creative Commons licence, go check them out.

These Things Shall Be

A new film to go with new music. The music is the first track I've produced using the recorded interviews I am making for the project. This one features Arthur from Ulverston, Lanternhouse's 92 year old neighbour who I had the pleasure of meeting one of the times he popped into the building for a brew. The poem is an old school hymn that was popular when he was a child. Look at the words here.

The music features processed field recordings from around Cumbria, including rain on my attic window, Whitehaven harbour and wind on Bardsea beach with harp made using Thumb Jam on my iPhone.

The film was started in a Meet The Artist session and is a collaboration with Geoff Benson from Kendal who came to check out digital film making after liking my work at the film night and chatting about new, cheap digital cameras. All the footage I used in the film are from Geoff's first go at using a digital film camera. More of his work will be in the next VJ pack that will be getting uploaded soon.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

A Return Journey Of Sorts

A track from my first field recording session round Ulverston and bus journey from Ulverston to Dalton. Nothing really interesting in the full recordings so I chopped them up into small sections and put them into Ableton Live and had a play to see if anything came from that. This is from my first session so thought it should be documented as a starting point of my residency at Lanternhouse.

The title is about the bus journey but also a reference to a home coming of sorts, growing up in Ulverston and how doing this project got me thinking about places of my youth that I'd like to revisit and record and add to the project.