Skip to main content

Chris Watson

InSpace, Edinburgh, April 22nd

How do you go from being a core member of experimental electronic
pioneers Cabaret Voltaire to becoming David Attenburgh and Bill Oddie’s
favourite sound recordist, with the odd radio documentary and
installation for assorted sonic arts festivals thrown in for good
measure? Sheffield-born Touch Records recording artiste Chris Watson
doesn’t have an answer for his seemingly wayward career trajectory over
the last thirty-odd years, but, on the eve of a trip to Iceland to make
a programme for BBC Radio 4 prior to a week-long Edinburgh residency
care of Edinburgh International Science Festival in association with
left-field music promoters Dialogues, neither does he see much
difference between his assorted outlets.

“I’m essentially a sound recordist,” Watson enthuses, “and I don’t see
any distinction between any of the things I do. Something I might do
for TV might end up informing an installation work, but what I get
excited by is the release of moving out of the studio. Sounds outside
are much more liberating.”

With Susan Phillipsz recently scooping the Turner Prize with her River
Clyde based sound installation, sonic art has effectively broken cover
in a way that Watson’s work, while different, can benefit from.

For his Edinburgh residency, Watson will trawl the sonic architecture
of North Berwick and surrounding areas prior to shaping the material
for a performance at InSpace.

“I’m interested in trying to capture that interface between land and
sea,” Watson says. “It’s about trying to capture the soul of a place.”

The List, March 2011

ends
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...
2 comments
Read more

Carla Lane – The Liver Birds, Mersey Beat and Counter Cultural Performance Poetry

Last week's sad passing of TV sit-com writer Carla Lane aged 87 marks another nail in the coffin of what many regard as a golden era of TV comedy. It was an era rooted in overly-bright living room sets where everyday plays for today were acted out in front of a live audience in a way that happens differently today. If Lane had been starting out now, chances are that the middlebrow melancholy of Butterflies, in which over four series between 1978 and 1983, Wendy Craig's suburban housewife Ria flirted with the idea of committing adultery with successful businessman Leonard, would have been filmed without a laughter track and billed as a dramady. Lane's finest half-hour highlighted a confused, quietly desperate and utterly British response to the new freedoms afforded women over the previous decade as they trickled down the class system in the most genteel of ways. This may have been drawn from Lane's own not-quite free-spirited quest for adventure as she moved through h...
Post a Comment
Read more