Being Heard

 I have had a wonderful experience of being listened to. In one day the chairman of the Plantation Gardens contacted me to ask if it would be useful for the gardeners to take into account my possible show of musicians in trees to prune undergrowth over the winter. Norwich City Council got in touch to request I meet with their head of Strategy and Transformation to chat through my idea of city centre vertical farms finding a home in the ailing shopping centres and the plant science labs, John Innes contacted me saying I could talk with their vertical farm experts. It's a privilege to be heard and the energy it's given me to keep asking questions and seeing new ways forward is priceless. Thank you to things that keep us moving forward.

Vertical Farms and Musicians in Trees

To keep track of my questions and visits to folks, I'll make some notes. I got a reply from Norwich City Council re my question of could Castle Mall and Chapelfield Intu Shopping centre be converted to vertical farms. They said it was interesting and they would consider it for their 2040 vision. I'm speaking to a friend this morning who works at the John Innes Centre ( local Plant Science Lab that has a world reputation), to find a way in to have conversations with John Innes folks who might be researching and developing vertical farms. I'd like to talk to someone from Chapelfield Intu, the company is in administration, but would be worth a dig. I want to record these conversations, but I'm feeling that at least at the moment, I'd like to get people's trust, then return with a microphone... although, some conversations won't be repeatable, due to people's availability.

Last night I popped to see Tully, a tree surgeon I know, to talk about putting musicians into trees. I'd like to orchestrate socially distanced gigs using the trees in the Plantation Gardens. Is it viable to strap musicians into trees and have them look like they have lived there for a while, that they are always in that tree? The musician would research the tree, write about the tree, build a friendship with the tree, write songs as if the tree were singing or creating the noise. The musician connects with the tree, learns about arboriculture, shares their learning and experience through online chats, blogging, a short film, live story telling. Over the weeks, you can drop into the plantation garden for a talk/story by one of the musicians, they share their process. 

It culminates in a gig, a promenade show, musicians in the trees, low lights, sounds, individual songs and songs all together. A soundscape to move people, connect to the space, the here and now.

I have a question

In my research to understand more about climate issues for our next KlangHaus ventures, I came across the idea of vertical farms. Vertical farming is the practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers inside a building in a controlled environment. Our shopping centres in my home city of Norwich, Castle Mall and Chapelfield Intu are not thriving, MY QUESTION IS, could they become vertical farms? Could we as citizens become connected to the food we eat through proximity to seeing it grow, maybe we could help grow the food we eat? One problem with vertical farming is proximity to market. Another problem is a good source of labour. I’m sure you could sit with a piece of paper and write a whole stack of positives for having an innovative city farm. Of course there are the whole plethora of reasons why not.

I have spoken to folks about this idea of having city centre vertical farms, where we the citizens can help grow food for ourselves, or at least connect with it, walk amongst it, watch it grow, learn about it. Get the schools in, the allotment champions, have socials, have gigs and art installations. Their eyes light up.

With failing harvests, impoverished soils why use swathes of landscape to grow our food? If the land wasn't used for farming, what would it look like? What do you see?

Then, second push, turn our decimated north city concrete shopping precinct into an Eden project for the east... again, having farming as well as tropical plants, socials, gigs, art, dance, cross generational events, celebrations of food seasons, group meals. If it had the investment to start, at least a quarter of the country would come and visit it.

What are the steps to realising such ventures, would they work? Do people want it? What are the blocks?

I'm going to make a radio documentary following this line of enquiry. I want to use sound, play with sound and conjure up a future I'd like to be part of.

http://vincent.callebaut.org  french architects vision.

Apocalypse - The nuts n bolts

I'm really proud of the video we ended up with from the live stream event last Thursday... but just wanted to share the nuts and bolts. In order to pace out where we needed to be, we broke the song down into bars and eventually when filming just into seconds and minutes. Jon did a recording counting out the bars so we could take audio cues during practice sessions. I listened to it so many times that I can only hear the song in terms of where I should be.

We are really proud of the green screen section where we walk through a door in the Outpost building in Anglia Square out onto Cromer beach. The continuity was crucial and photos and diagrams were made as we were responsible for ourselves and the order and selection of items we were wearing. Everything had to be secured well for our walk into the sea. We did lose a kettle to the waves. Luckily not the same kettle I wore into the sea last September that, even though it was an electric kettle, it still works perfectly... 

Huge thanks to Nathan Clarke for directing, brain surgeoning the shots and putting the whole thing together with camera folks, Tom and Dhugal. Thanks to the wonderful Pasco Q Kevlin for his guest appearance and to Outpost for the commission to do this. 

Attention to detail lights my fire and I spent many an hour creating the Apocalyptic maps and charts... which are for sale here at Bandcamp. Sharing the process seems a good way to feel connected.

Live Streaming during Covid19 restrictions...

Next week we will be doing a Live Stream from Outpost Gallery of the latest Neutrinos release, Apocalyptic. The live stream will be recorded so we thought we'd make a video for the song, in the moment. This involves the planning I love, counting out bars, counting seconds it takes us to move from one scene to another. It felt very much like the process of making a KlangHaus. Practicing shots and angles, placements of artwork and props. Continuity of what we are wearing. There is an outside pre-recorded location which we shot last Thursday and we have to make sure when we plan the preceding shot, which will be in Outpost, that we look exactly the same. The song is a free form improvisation that Mark unravelled in one take. He says,'Apocalyptic is an improvisation on the end of days, the end of things and perhaps the beginning of new things. It’s playful, it’s a notional visit to Waikiki and Honolulu by way of Cromer. Why Waikiki? It’s such a lovely word to sing and WaiWai not? Honolulu, it’s all disappearing, we’re all disappearing, and this is just a little poem to us all disappearing into the sea, back into the sea, the lovely sea, where we all come from.' You can tune in live 19:00 30/07/20 at this link twitch.tv/outpostgallery. The cover artwork to the music is another in the series of Paul Flack, Nathan Clarke is film director. a sneak preview of the track itself is available here.

20 Years of The Neutrinos 26.01.19

Celebrating 20 years as a band brought with it hind-site and experience. When we were preparing and rehearsing, we imagined ourselves onstage. I realised that I had enough breath to sing everything well and that feeling breathless onstage was mainly nerves. I decided not to be nervous and to have enough breath. It worked. The same with learning lyrics, I remembered the feeling of only knowing them sketchily. I didn't want that feeling, so I decided to learn the lyrics and over-learn them, so that my nervous in-the-moment brain could cope. It worked. I fluffed them a bit, but I recovered immediately, because I had made the decision that I would be alright. We had moved the stage into the centre of the NAC auditorium before and played in-the-round, so we had good experience to plan and imagine potential difficulties. We hired in more sound equipment because we knew it would help the audience enjoy the experience more. The show was a clear demonstration of our experience as so many comments from audience members said we looked like we were having such fun, "a joy", they said. It's a privileged to get to this point. 20 years of The Neutrinos didn't feel like, 'oh you still doing it then,' it felt like a celebration of 20 years of what were had learnt in a huge noise-clash of fun. The Butcher celebration Weekend inspired us to bring in the extra guitarists for the final song Isotope... it was immense.

10 years of The Butcher of Common Sense 10.11.18

We invited some mates, gathered many instruments, we made soup, we wrote an album in an hour, we played, we searched, we explored, we ate curry, we sawed up lots of instruments, much to some folks distress...it sounded immense though... we played covers of Butcher songs, we played loud, we drank booze, we asked for help and something special happened. 10 years of the Butcher of Common Sense celebrated.