iain armstrong • sound artist

I will be playing with Antti Saario as Anvil & Stirrup at two events in the coming months.

The first gig is at Falmouth’s School of Noises on Thursday 19th January at the Jacob’s Ladder Inn where we’ll playing a live laptop set and a live electronics improv with double bass player Thanos Polymeneas who’s also performing on the night.

The second is Audiograft 2012, Oxford’s festival of sound art and experimental music. We’ll be playing a live laptop set at the Jaqueline Du Pré Concert Hall on 2nd March at 7.30pm. Also on the bill is our friend and ex BEAST composer David Prior and the fantastic Trevor Wishart.

The Audiograft festival runs from Monday 27th February to Sunday 4th March and includes sound installations and performances from the likes of Lee Patterson and Robert Curgenven, ParkinsonSaunders, Paul Whitty, Max Eastley, Jason Kahn and Patrick Farmer.

I’ve just finished a commission from Sound and Music working on an audio installation project with the Bush Theatre in London.

Sixty-Six Books is the inaugural show in the Bush Theatre’s new home, an ambitious project celebrating the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible.  A cycle of sixty-six new works have been commissioned – plays, poems, stories and songs – each of which provide a contemporary response to the themes, stories and ideas in one of the sixty-six books of the Bible. Together they represent an unprecedented commissioning cycle in terms of the scale, range and quality of the writers involved.  They include: Archbishop Rowan Williams, Neil Labute, Wole Soyinka, Jackie Kay, David Edgar, Kwame Kwei Armah, Andrew Motion, Michael Rosen, Carol Ann Duffy and Billy Bragg.

I have recorded and produced twelve of the writer’s responses for inclusion in an installation that uses modifed telephone boxes as interactive listening stations. Users can select, and listen to the twelve responses at their leisure. The phone boxes include responses from Andrew Motion, Jackie Kay, Billly Bragg, Laura Dockrill and Michael Rosen. There are four phone boxes located: outside the Bush Theatre; in the foyer of the National Theatre; at Foyles Boookshop on the Southbank; in the West 12 Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

The complete cycle of works will be performed at the Bush Theatre and Westminster Abbey from the 10-29th October. The phone boxes will be accessible throughout this period, during the opening hours of the respective venues. You can book tickets for the performances via the Bush Theatre website, the phone boxes are free.

Here is a short identification track I wrote for the project:

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I was delighted to be asked to join the fantastic BiLE in July. BiLE are a collaborative group of composers and performers of instrumental and electroacoustic music with a shared interest in live performance. They’ve been playing together since the beginning of the year and are developing a growing repertoire of pieces including existing scores, works written by members of the ensemble and improvisations. They have already played several gigs in the UK and Europe.

BiLE plays as a networked laptop ensemble with each performer contributing their own ‘instruments’ via a range of platforms such as MAX/MSP and Supercollider.  They often incorporate live sound sources and experimentation with gestural controllers such as iPhones, wiimotes and Xbox Kinect. Performances also include live visuals.

I played my first gig with BiLE at ArtsFest in Birmingham, Sept 2011. We performed in the impressive Round Room at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Here’s a short video of the performance by Antonio Roberts:

For more info on BiLE check out the website.

The next SOUNDkitchen gig is SONICpicnic on the 29th July at VIVID, Birmingham. We’re very excited about being in a new space and have an extended programme of performances, films, artist talks and food! The line up includes some of the SOUNDkitchen team, returning friends and exciting new acts.

We have a mutli channel listening room with a 16 channel speaker tree and I’ve contributed a piece that will be spatialised in this space.

More info on the SOUNDkitchen website.

The next SOUNDkitchen event is on Thursday 23rd June 2011 at Hare and Hounds. We are very excitied about our headline act Pleq who is joining us all the way from Poland. Pleq is the solo project of Bartosz Dziadosz, an experimental musician who combines elements of drone, down tempo, glitch and modern classical. He creates his work by fusing together independently synthesized sounds, often incorporating violin, the unexpectedly melancholic sound of a piano and sometimes female vocals.

Also on the bill is Birningham based Mark Harris, no stranger to SOUNDkitchen having performed at our opening gig with modulate and one of the contributors to our first collaborative project STONEsoup. He will be performing a solo laptop set.

Fianlly we are welcoming Leicester based turntablist and composer James Kelly to perform a live vinyl remix of his studio album Transformation of the Mind with live vocals from Ola Szmidt.

Check out the links and SOUNDkitchen website for artist bios and soundcloud audio samples.

The next SOUNDkitchen event is happening this thursday 17th March at Hare & Hounds, Birmingham. Featuring the first performance from BiLE (Birmingham Laptop Ensemble) and DJ Seb Merrick playing a mix of Balkan and electroacoustic music!

Anvil & Stirrup’s ThousandUnfold has been selected for inclusion in an online jukebox as part of the Audiograft festival of sound art and contemporary music in Oxford this week.

SOUNDkitchen launches their first series of concerts with the Opening Banquet at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham on 17th February 2011. Here is the flyer with info on all the gigs. More info, artist bios, audio etc on the website.

I’ve started doing some work with Get On The Radio. They are a team of experienced and enthusiastic creatives who have come together through a shared passion for creative education and the exceptional teaching and learning potential of radio broadcasting.

They’re currently working in schools across the Midlands setting up pupil led radio stations. They have a great team that provide everything from technial advice, installation and training to setting up a school radio station with production teams for a variety of radio programmes.

They have strong links with radio professionals and programme makers who can deliver specific masterclasses. I’m working with them as a producer, helping pupils to generate content for their shows such as theme tunes, jingles, features and sound effects.

It’s a fantastic method for encouraging independent, cross-curricular learning in an exciting and creative way.

Find our more and listen to some of the results on their website - www.getontheradio.co.uk

I’ve recently joined SOUNDkitchen. We are a collective of composers and sound artists with backgrounds in electroacoustic and experimental music. The organisation is the brainchild of Annie Mahtani, ex BEAST,  and is dedicated to promoting the work of composers and sound artists working in the field of sound.

We’re kicking off  with a pilot series of gigs at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham and one at mac (Midlands Arts Centre) over the coming months. We’ve been busy putting together a programme of emerging and more established electronic music acts from Birmingham and beyond, mixing up current and ex BEAST composers with the likes of modulate, Nic Bullen and Simon Whetham.

I’ll be performing a live laptop set with Antti Saario as Anvil & Stirrup in the April gig and contributing to a new, collaborative composition for the gig at mac in March.

More details at soundkitchenuk.org